A further thought on McCloskey

While I anticipated that I’d disagree with her on many issues (and I did), while reflecting in McCloskey’s arguments I found it hard to articulate my gut reaction to her until I connected it with some of Gramsci’s discussion about ideology. In “Hegemony, Relations of Force, Historical Bloc,” he writes that “one must therefore distinguish between historically organic ideologies, those, that is, which are necessary to a given structure, and ideologies that are arbitrary, rationalist, ‘willed’ (199).  In much simpler terms, I believe Gramsci is saying that some ideologies articulate or arise from reality, and others manipulate the interpretation of reality. And my reaction to McCloskey is that she manipulates rather than articulates.

This is just one example. Among the many points on which I disagree with McCloskey were her egregious statements regarding the environment. The first of those arguments was that there are things we can fix. Well, maybe not. Maybe we’ve passed the tipping point on climate change, among many other things.  A cursory review of scientific evidence would likely refute her claim. The other, which she describes as “things we can’t do anything about,” referred to the extinction of species, that it was related to globalization and the “Pangea effect” in that we are all becoming one large continent and species (like Kudzu) will dominate (and extinguish) another. I remain incredulous. Again, scientific investigation would most likely refute this. Her oversimplification of issues in making these broad claims brought everything she said into question. Eliminate the green tape and “innovation” will take care of the rest? Is she in denial or is she trying to sell it to us?

It seems to me that McCloskey’s writing and speaking are the “elucubration of a particular individual.” Arbitrary, rationalist and willed, indeed.

Bourgeois Ideology does (not) equal Freedom

As Nicole, Anne, and Eder have pointed out, Prof. McCloskey’s arguments for capitalism were a captivating performance, but in some ways seemed to be fighting an elaborate straw man. We all know that the material wealth of the world is “better” i.e. we have more stuff and that stuff makes us, in general, live longer (though it also kills us in new ways). The assumption is that this makes everyone happier, right down to the descendants of colonized peoples who now have the “dignity” to innovate—and this proof of the non-exploitative nature of capitalism (I’m sticking with term capitalism, I think it’s historically solid. No one defines capital as brick on brick—it’s a generative flow of money: M’). And all this came from an immaterial thing: the idea that those who innovate are dignified (a position which, in our society, is not going out of fashion—see Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Madmen, &c.)

Okay, fine. But when she defers to Gramsci, making claims that his understanding of ideology is correct, I have to raise an eyebrow. If she concedes that, then let’s turn Gramsci on McCloskey.

In our selections from his prison notebooks, Gramsci’s concern seems to be with exactly the kind of “vulgar” determinism that I find disturbing about gross materialist history: base determines superstructure. Gramsci sees it differently. First, he claims that ideology is not a “deception to which [the governed] are subject” or a “willed and knowing deception” by the governing (196). We aren’t talking about conspiracy theories. Rather, for the “philosophy of praxis  superstructures are and objective and operative reality.” Furthermore, “the philosophy of praxis is itself a superstructure, it is the terrain on which determinate social groups become conscious of their own social being, their own strengths, their own tasks, their own becoming” (196). This seems to all be what McCloskey is agreeing with—ideas can determine the unfolding of material history—the great enrichment.

Gramsci wouldn’t be too surprised about McCloskey’s evidence. Because he points out that “the criterion that a philosophical current must be criticized and evaluated for what it professes to be but for what it really is and shows itself to be in concrete historical works applies to Croce’s [or McCloskey’s] thought too” (195). Which is to say, Qui bono? And it’s politically duplicitous to say that the working class is who gains, politically, from the rapid growth of wealth. So it’s no surprise that McCloskey points to the “great enrichment” as proof of the value of this philosophical current. Except by such a material criterion, McCloskey’s politics comes up wanting.

Her bourgeois virtues aren’t the ultimate good in the world she claims. As Nicole points out, McCloskey never comes out to say, “happiness=stuff” but she came darn close. And that’s just plain false. To a given point its true…say, from $3 a day to $20 a day. But then…it just isn’t—or rather, it becomes relative. There are lots of studies about this, and to economists it is called the Easterlin paradox (see Patel, The Value of Nothing). For all of her professed solidarity with the working class students, and striking for the dignity of her position (which I would have liked to hear more about…that is, the question of Tom’s she never answered about what she sees as the proper role for class struggle) her position doesn’t empower anyone. It seems to me that power isn’t about material wealth, but relative access to wealth as a means of politically intervening into the circumstances of one’s life. If this is the case then her libertarianism is indeed paternal; it keeps people in thrall to an ideology of individual rights and a system which can, literally, capitalize on those rights. The poor have no power when they are not able to stop corporations via the elected government—when they are kept in the same disintegrated state as Gramsci’s southern peasants. There are no social rights, and no environmental rights. Those concerned with environmental justice have no recourse to protest “innovation” that would open up the artic to drilling, territorialize the resources of politically marginal peoples, enclose the genetic commons of biodiversity, or risk oil spills over precariously balanced fossil water. Green tape might be a good idea, even purely economically, and certainly for reasons of democracy.

Even if innovation worked the way McCloskey claims, which is a claim I doubt on definitional grounds, there is no reason to assume that capital, or “innovism,” has any ability or reason to check itself or share power beyond the class and historical bloc that can access this tool. Freedom might appear to increase under the bourgeois neoliberal system, but you just have to read a Kafka story or some Foucault to realize how there’s more to it than that.

p.s. Here is an interesting article that takes up ideology/political economy and base/superstructure questions (in the context of the old nature/nurture debate) without realizing it. 

"What we unfortunately call capitalism"

So… just how persuasive was Dr. McCloskey in her presentation?  Well, was the primary objective here to convince us with little to no resistance?  I doubt it, but if this was the case, McCloskey clearly came short.  If, on the other hand, the goal was to engage her audience and encourage responses (whether pro or con), then the answer is she was very persuasive.  Her final remarks in the form of a rhetorical question pointing towards our possible “hatred” of capitalism suggest that one thing: the proverbial seed was planted, to which even our initial resistance will serve as its irrigation.  Think in terms of the dialectic method here.

It is little wonder that few of us would have liked to discuss some of her claims a bit further.  Nicole’s and Anne’s blogs (as with this post) are excellent examples.

My takeaway from McCloskey was the “bigger picture” she was selling.  The good of “what we unfortunately call capitalism.”  One of the questions I would have to ask her concerns the role of resistance to capitalism—however much the result of our hatred: How instrumental has the left been (for all its resistance and endeavors against capitalism) to this apparent accumulation of wealth, particularly in the bettering of the lower classes?  What becomes of capitalism without the resistance of the left?

Also, and perhaps most importantly, can we account for the good of capitalism as a stage in the dialectical processed outlined by Marx?  In other words, if the path of capitalism, as McCloskey suggests, has been in an ongoing route of improving conditions for the poor, can we infer that capitalism is bound towards an equalizing state?  I would not mind spending some time in class discussing McCloskey’s talk.

The Real and the Symbolic: Marx, McCloskey, & the Möbius Strip

The Real and the Symbolic:

Marx, McCloskey, & the Möbius Strip

Marx’s grand narrative both begins and ends with a form of communism. If we accept that human development will follow this narrative, is there a reason to assume that the endpoint is an endpoint and not a new beginning—that this wouldn’t be cyclical? If primitive communism could, through the emergence of private property, begin the dialectical development that would lead to capitalism—and if capitalism could, through inevitable intensification and revolt, lead to socialism and the ultimate form of communism—why must the narrative end (and "real history" begin) there?

This occurred to me again when we encountered Deirdre McCloskey’s work. Like Marx, she drew from historical examples as a basis for theorizing about the future. And I think that we could agree with many of her points and arrive at a very different conclusion.

On a side-note, her writing and speaking styles were so engaging that I think that it could be possible for both supporters and opponents (except maybe those uncomfortable having their ideas questioned) to enjoy reading or listening to her. (I may be wrong, of course; my own phlegmatic sort of "high tolerance" for ideological differences could cloud my judgment here.) I especially enjoyed her ubiquitous nineteenth-century references—At one point, she even referred to the bourgeoisie with the phrase “It’s me” in a pitch-perfect call-back to Flaubert’s self-identification with his bourgeois protagonist, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” It’s actually this type of representational relationship that I want to consider….

As I thought about Marx’s inflection of dialectical development, I began to wonder whether these apparent antitheses, capitalism and communism, have something within them that causes them to lead into each other. This seemed especially possible as I reflected on the interesting interweaving of socialist and capitalist trends within McCloskey’s approach. While denying that redistribution is an effective way to aid the lower classes, she mentioned that she redistributes 15% of her own income to the poor. Moreover, the type of corporation that she described seems to be the “corporation with a heart,” although as I understand it, publicly traded corporations are obligated to prioritize the accumulation of capital in their decisions. This seems to warrant exploration.

Along these lines, she defined socialism in terms that seemed to me to characterize it as a sort of “excess” of capitalism (in an Aristotelian sense). It sounded like a form of monopolization: the state becomes the monopoly corporation (and the competitive drive to innovate diminishes). (Lenin seems to hit on this as well.) Socialism as an intensification of capitalism seems to make some Marxist sense insofar as the intensification of capitalism would lead to revolt.

Does this make sense in terms of our current financial situation? There do seem to be a lot of corporate takeovers and close-to-monopolies forming. If corporate America receives state representation through political contributions… are we, through an intensification of capitalism, approaching a dark form of communism? Could a Marxist revolt depend on hitting a tipping point at which there is a sense of having the right “coin,” but being on the wrong side of it? the frustration of being close to an answer, but not quite there?

Rhetoric & Terror

The idea that capitalism and communism could lead into each other through endless cyclical developments called to my mind Giorgio Agamben’s description of Rhetoric and Terror in The Man Without Content.

In the context of artist creation, Agamben describes a dialectic between artists/authors whom he describes as “Rhetoricians, who dissolve all meaning into form and make form into the sole law of literature” and those he describes as “Terrorists, who refuse to bend to this law and instead pursue the opposite dream of a language that would be nothing but meaning, of a thought in whose flame the signs would be fully consumed, putting the writer face to face with the Absolute” (8). The Rhetorician tries to represent reality through signifiers. The Terrorist tries to bring signifiers to life as objects within reality. These lead into each other in an un-synthesizable relationship akin to a möbius strip: “Fleeing from Rhetoric has led him to the Terror, but the Terror brings him back to its opposite, Rhetoric… in a vicious circle” (10).

At first, I thought that this Rhetoric/Terror relationship came to my mind simply because I was positing a similar relationship between capitalism and communism. But if symbolism is already grounded in value theory for Marx, then maybe there is more to this.

For Marx, the capitalist’s surplus value originates in wage-based labor power. (And interestingly, McCloskey mentioned the need for a “minimum income” rather than a “minimum wage.”) This is where the expression “time is money” came from, right? The representation of human time, human life, as money. This is, I think, what Georges Bataille pinpoints as a form of degradation, an alienation from oneself. It opposes experiencing a sense of being entirely present, being immanent in the world. (He draws a distinction between the regular “world of objects” and what he calls the “world of things,” which he associates with a sense of alienation. Bataille’s things are Marx’s commodities, I believe. Man becomes a thing and alienates himself from his true nature by equating his time, his life, with money.)

These are my questions, or hypotheses, then: 

Could we consider this desire to transform time into money as the Rhetorical desire of the capitalist? The capitalist pushes for the symbol—the money over the time it represents. 

Conversely, could we consider the communist to have a Terroristic (in Agamben's sense) desire to realize the symbol—to liberate the human from what Bataille would consider the degradation of self-alienating commodification?

And if so, do these apparent opposites naturally lead to each other, suggesting that Marx’s narrative could be cyclical?

A Response to McCloskey

Suffice to say, I think McCloskey's presentation came at an opportune time. As we transition away from Marx and Capital, we are able to examine some of the ways Marx functions in common rhetorical tropes. I think before beginning it is worth noting that on several occasions the Dr. McColoskey's work is highly regarded in the field of economics. Certainly, her CV would make any scholar blush with envy. It is for this reason, that I am surprised. Surprised that while she seems to know better, her additions to contemporary discourse  follow in large part neo-liberal discourse about the left.  Below I list some of the, unconscious I think, tropes and discourses that McCloskey perhaps in a moment of dis-reflection employs towards her persuasive end.

Economic Growth Does Not Occur on the Backs of Slaves
  This assertion was used to illustrate how it was innovation (or empirically tested betterment) that resulted in jump in material wealth. Her emphasis of the veracity of the statement subtly implied that Marx and subsequent Marxists denied either the material productivity of capitalism or the nature of individual laborers in the system. On the contrary, Marx both acknowledges the productive potential of capitalism as well as the necessity for laborers to freely enter into contracts with their employers.  An issue that Marco (perhaps in anticipation of McCloskey) has discussed at length. In at least referring to Marx, the argument constructs a false foe.
 Of course, we know that Marx too was wary of heralding the positive effects of capitalism. While laborers may enter into their contracts freely, always the employer capitalist is at advantage. McCloskey's equation of greater material resources (from an anachronistically calculated three dollars to thirty dollars) does not explain the changing relations of society. Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, and numerous scholars have commented on the negative role of a capital/empirically tested better way of living.

Its Not Just Capital Accumulation that Generates Wealth
This is a point that I found very interesting about McCloskey's overall argument. Again, an assertion left perhaps partially unexplained by its creator that yields only a false foe. Neither Marx nor any of us(sometimes) correct interpreters of him would maintain simple capital accumulation might account for economic expansion and growth. That power lies with the means of production. For the common man, such means might be his own laboring tools. On an industrial level however, the true generator of larger amounts of labor surplus value tend to be industrial. The machines in of themselves are valued not for their exchange potential, but for the ability to decrease the amount of labor needed for a product and therefore increase the amount of surplus value.
At multiple points, McCloskey vulgarly asserts that even if the wealth were redistributed it would serve to minimally enrich individuals only once.  Such an assertion I think none would argue with. Thus the emphasis on the distribution of the means of production.  A discussion of the redistribution of money and a redistribution of the means of production are two very different ideas in of themselves.

  Given this point, I found it odd the McCloskey chose to focus on foreign aid as an example that capital accumulation alone cannot account for economic growth. As evidence, she points to the billions of dollar poured in to African countries. Despite the donated capital, these countries had failed to grow, she said. Yet, if we take a closer look at the form of much of this aid, we see that most of it was sometimes conditional. As anecdotal example, lets look to Afghanistan.  After allied invasion, a large debate surrounding the country's  poppy fields commenced. Moves to incorporate Afghanistan's poppies into the legal medical-opiate market were thwarted. Similarly, calls to encourage flower harvesting and growth were vetoed. Despite the obvious advantages to the Afghans, these plans were abandoned because various allied forces feared for their national industries. Interested parties like  Australia, France, India, Spain, and Turkey who currently trade legal medical opiates dissuaded the international proposal.  This example illustrates two points. First, wealth can be generated in greater quantities by having more powerful states squash competition. Perhaps, economics is not a zero-sum game, but not everyone is playing under those rules. Further, it is an example of how the power to be productive and the means of production may be denied as part of a capitalist/empirically proven betterment. In reference to this weeks readings, Lenin also takes issue with the role of the state in reference to international economic relations.
Anachronisms and the Rhetorical Power of Framing
Finally, it is worth reflecting on McCloskey's rhetorical operation, as one audience member encouraged. First, we should question that anachronistic application of three dollars a day. Even assuming the calculations and methodologogy are sound, which I do so only for the sake of argument, we have to wonder at the decision to equate a human's existence to three dollars. Certainly, the cave man's lament prior to entering his bed was not one of oppression or hardship at his menial three dollars. Implied under this anachronistic calculation is the idea that money equals happiness and better living. An assertion, that due to its implied nature is never fully detailed by McCloskey. Never before have we experienced this level of wealth, but in fairness never before (last two hundred years aside) measured our wealth in dollars alone. The ideological assumption that maintains material wealth affords happiness is silently maintain and enthymemic like quality.

Still we might consider further the false dichotomy often trotted out by neoliberals or those advocates for empirically proven betterment. The idea of socialism versus capitalism exists exclusively as ideas. The reality of both of these methods are more complicated. Today, perhaps only one country may be charged with socialism. Like wise, virtually no countries can brag of an entirely untouched capitalist market. The Euro-American world, the one McCloskey largely relegates herself to,  are sites of mixed systems. So I am at a loss, when McCloskey in her brief readings given to our class gives Sweden as an example of capitalist awesomeness. Certainly, her distantly related cousin's BMW is enviable, but that country and most of the Scandinavian neighbors employee  policies that according to McCloskey hurt the innovators. Her example is telling for a number of reasons. First, it puts away the false dichotomy in which McCloskey indulges. It also illustrates that while capitalism produces wealth, its redistribution does not spell disaster. Perhaps, we can do more to ease the suffering and encourage more equal living the carrying on our individual self indulgent ways.

I think there is much more to be said about McCloskey's visit and presentation, however these seemed to be the main points most relevant to our previous class discussions.
 

The Way We Live Now vs. The Germination of McCloskeyian "Betterment"

The Way We Live Now vs. The Germination of McCloskeyian "Betterment"

While Deirdre McCloskey made some very persuasive and intriguing points, I found myself wondering how different the current financial environment is from the one that germinated the "Great Enrichment," or the "Betterment" that she describes. Since she, like Marx, uses historical examples to theorize about the future, it seems worthwhile to consider how the variables might have changed. 

First, since 1971, our money has been divorced from the gold standard. In contrast, from what I understand, the nineteenth century witnessed an international movement in the opposite direction, as multiple countries agreed to use gold to back up money. I’m not sure exactly what the ramifications of this might be (Dammit Marx, I’m a literature student, not an economist!), but this seems worth mentioning.

Second, credit and debt seem to have worked quite differently in the nineteenth century than they do now. Although debt problems rose alongside Victorian commodity culture, I don’t think that this sort of “negative money” was accrued in the same way that it is now. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky, but I know that a terrifying number of students finish college tens of thousands of dollars in debt. This type of poverty tends not to be readily visible, as these people still find places to live and money to buy groceries, yet their debts accumulate. They don't end up in debtors' prisons, yet this “less than zero” balance could prevent them from owning a house, renting certain apartments, or getting certain jobs. This would certainly inhibit the bourgeois Betterment that McCloskey envisions. This dearth of the upwardly mobile would have consequences not only in terms of their potential enrichment but their potential consumption.

Debt at the Beginning of the Great Enrichment

So how did debt work at the beginning of McCloskey’s Great Enrichment? This is my understanding, pieced together from varied readings... Stores often established credit for customers based on their understanding of their clients’ social status (Rumors of aristocratic connections do the trick for Lydgate in Middlemarch). Toward the end of the century, with the popularity of traveling to larger cities to shop, store owners would have to rely on newspapers and trade papers to judge when to sell on credit. (Plus, loans could also come through pawnbrokers, business owners, and friends, as in Crime and Punishment and, again, Middlemarch).

However, creditors could sometimes be evaded. There were no electronic debt-tracking systems or phone-calling debt collectors, although there were humans who tracked debtors (Think the bailiff who hunts down Harold Skimpole in Bleak House). But the growing cities—abounding with strangers from a variety of different places—offered anonymity to people willing to make a completely fresh start and clever enough, or deceptive enough, to find a position without comprehensive or entirely credible references (Lady Audley’s Secret and Bleak House come to mind. And “How to Live Well on Nothing a Year” in Vanity Fair outlines how Becky and Rawdon elevate their social status through conspicuous consumption, under-the-table dealings with a moneyed aristocrat, and deceiving creditors.)  

Of course, the consequences of accruing debt could be dire. Entire families moved into debtors’ prisons, and many languished and died there. In many ways, it seems to have been more of a family problem (centralized through the patriarchy) than an individual one. Wives did their shopping on their husbands’ credit (Think M. Heureux in Madame Bovary), but their debt would shift to their husbands (although I think that in some cases, husbands could free themselves of this debt by proving they hadn’t given their wives permission to spend the money). Eldest sons could capitalize on expected inheritances and go into debt gambling at gentlemen’s clubs or outfitting themselves at tailors’ houses (Think Buddenbrooks, Middlemarch, or The Way We Live Now). On the other hand, sons could also contribute to paying off the family's debt. As a child, Dickens worked miserably long hours in a blacking factory while living in a boarding house to pay off his father’s debts, while his parents and younger siblings lived in the debtors’ prison with his father.

The Way We Live Now

It seems like a lot of modern debt falls on individuals, especially young students without the means to repay it in a timely fashion. It is still a problem for established households, but the worst situations seem to be those of isolated young people whose balance drops further into the negative at an alarming rate. This debt seems more hidden, somehow: I never see men hauled away to debtors’ prisons or debt collectors removing furniture from the homes of once-moneyed, now down-on-their-luck aristocrats.

The continuation of McCloskeyian Betterment seems to depend on the formulation, commodification, and accumulation of new ideas. Although the successful college drop-out has almost become a cliché in the realm of new technologies, this success seems somewhat out of reach even to the most intelligent college drop-outs. So, accepting McCloskey’s major premises, if we consider that college is represented as a necessity to intelligent, innovative young people, and many of them cannot afford to attend without student loans, then the continuation of the Great Enrichment might have some major obstacles.

I know this post might be a long one to get through, but does anyone have any ideas? 

How might our divorce from the gold standard inflect McCloskey's logic or projections? Would it strengthen her point that the world isn't a zero-sum equation, since we don't have to be held to a limited amount of gold? What about the difference in the way debt works now vs. at the beginning of McCloskey's "Great Enrichment?"

Lenin & Ukraine

While this is bit off topic, let me try and connect it up. As we're reading Lenin's State and the Revolution this weekend, Putin is sending troops into Ukraine. Although I could not find much in State on the issue of Russian nationalism, I went back and read some of Lenin's earlier writings between 1905-17, and I found this: "Whether the Ukraine, for example, is destined to form an independent state is a matter that will be determined by a thousand unpredictable factors. Without attempting idle “guesses”, we firmly uphold something that is beyond doubt: the right of the Ukraine to form such a state. We respect this right; we do not uphold the privileges of Great Russians with regard to Ukrainians; we educate the masses in the spirit of recognition of that right, in the spirit of rejecting state privileges for any nation."

I don't really enough about the current political Russian political climate to know whether Putin quotes Lenin and the old Bolsheviks to justify invading neighboring states, but nationalist rhetoric is often tied to revolutionary rhetoric, which made stumbling upon Lenin's quote, supporting Ukraine's autonomy rather ironic. Putin often claims that Russians are oppressed by western democratic organizations like the EU, the UN, and NATO, which parallels Lenin's talk of smashing up the bureaucratic machine of bourgeois capitalist states. Putin claims that he is protecting the interests of Russians in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, and their right to align with Russia instead of Europe and the EU. But underneath the nationalist rhetoric, is he saying, as Lenin said, that western capitalism does not work for Russia, and that the apparatus of capitalist democracies must be "smashed up" and replaced with another system? Is he calling for a proletariat state, a sequel to the Soviet Union, or simply trying to grow his power?  Either way, by weakening the democracies of states like Ukraine and Belarus, he intends to subsume them in Great Russia. When and where will he stop, I wonder?

Anyway, back to Lenin for a second. In State and Revolution, he claims that Marx did not simply recognize class struggle, but he advocated for a socialist, proletariat revolution that would eventually "wither away" class divisions and pave the way for a "pure" communist state. Yet he's quite obtuse about how this new proletarian state would be run. While he talks of "smashing" the old apparatus, what do you replace it with? He mentions a postal service-type economy, where there's no hierarchy and all workers are paid similar wages. But we all know that the US Posta/ Service, has been losing money every year for decades. I don't know, but maybe this is one reason why the USSR failed, that their "new economy" could not compete globally, and therefore Russia became a comparatively poor nation?  But now that Russia has become a more wealthy nation, their nationalist pride is once again growing. Flexing their muscles. Either way, Lenin's vision of a socialist state that "withers away" class division did not happen. The old USSR had as much social hierarchy and bureaucracy (if not more), as western nations. In other words, the proletarian state morphed into another "bourgeois" state.  As for Putin, who has gotten rich off capitalism, I don't think he wants to smash up any "system" as much as he wants to expand his power, and Russia's border.