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Re: [jox] A response to Michel Bauwens



Dear Hans-Gert,
I agree with your distinction between Marxian and Marxistic. But
disagree that all Marxistic trends of 20th century were a religious
distortion of the former, though many were, particulatly the stalinist
and social democratic ones.Troskists had their own shre in this
business, though some of them like E. Mandel produce very original work.
But, we also had very original Marxian thinkers who truely went beyond
Marx. In my view the work of original Marxist thinkers of 20th century
is and will remain among the most precious treasures of human thought . 
Broadly speaking Marx's paradigm had the following pillars:
1- A theory of Mode of production.
2- A Theory of capitalist mode of production: The laws of value and
surplus value, the forms and movement of value and, surplus value,
different forms of their expressions ( absolute and relative surplus
value, price, wage, profit, interest and rent) and crisis.
3- A theory of class struggle. The theory of class struggle existed
before Marx and Engels. they rearticulated it.

4- Materialist and dialectical Epistemology.

Of these 4 pillars 1, 4 are still relevant for the study of p2p. The 2,
namely the theory of value is not relevant for describing and analysing
the inner logic of p2p. The Marxian law of value is totally absent from
the inner logic of p2p. Hence p2p is a new mode of production. But Marx
theory of rent which is a particular component of his theory of value
explains the ways in which particular capitalists use p2p to extract
rent from other capitalists by approriating larger shares of the total
surplus value which is produced outside p2p by wage labor which is
exchanged with capital. The fact that p2p is used by some capitalists to
extract rent does not erase its none capitalist inner logic. Here, we
need a dialectical imagination to distinguish between the appearence
(p2p as a means of extraction of rent) and the essence (P2p having a
non-capitalistic inner logic). 

Marx theory of rent is also very relevant for explaining the political
economy of google, Facebook and much of knowlege economy. Unfortunately
I am not familiar with Oekenox discussions. I would love to go through
its archives, if they exist, and I am given the permission to do so. 
But I agree with the statement that the true study of p2p, like any
other study, is a critical, i.e, materialist and dialectical, one, hence
the continuing relavance of the 4. I am not familiar with process of
fork. But I think a journal which is deveoted to critical studies should
also occasinally publish good and original work which are not critical.
For example a Marxian journal of political economy must publish oroginal
criticism of Marx by neo-Rcardian economists.



all the best 

Jakob








Michel Bauwens 03/05/12 3:15 AM >>> 
[Converted from multipart/alternative] 

[1 text/plain] 
thanks Hans-Gert, unfortunately I will not be able to follow your German

work, but if you do write in English, do let us know, 

Michel 

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 3:11 PM, Hans-Gert Gräbe wrote: 

Hi Michel, 

Am 28.02.2012 08:36, schrieb Michel Bauwens: 

Hi Jacob, I'm partial to, but ultimately agnostic to Marx' value
theory, 
... 


I think, that there is a big difference between Marxian and marxistic 
theory in general and value theory in particular. The former refers to
the 
work of a great thinker, the latter to a religoiusly charged mass 
perception of the former in the 20th century (there was a very
instructive 
paper on that topic in german by Michael Wendl in "Sozialismus
2/2011", as 
far as I see, not online available). 

Being "ultimately agnostic" to the former is in the good, negatively 
turned tradition of the latter and, in my opinion, a sign of cultural 
ignorance. Nothing at all to notice about in ignorant times but ... 

I see the main difference between JoPP and CSPP - not being involved
in 
neither one of these projects, but knowing the Oekonux discutants for
a 
while - just there: JoPP aims at studying the new experiences without
any 
theoretical background, CSPP aimed at "critical studies" in the same
sense 
as Marx wrote a "critics of political economy". 

Both are respectable underpinnings (in particular the p2p foundation 
activities) but a thorough economy theoretic analysis of PP beyond 
religoiusly charged perceptions did not yet start and - my strong
feeling - 
will not start being "ultimately agnostic to Marxian value theory". 

Since from _that_ point of view it becomes very soon clear that P2P
was 
all the time in the core of capitalistic economics (free market), but
since 
capitalistic economics and capitalistic practice (monopoly tendency)
are in 
a permanent struggle a capitalistic economical theory cannot be a
steady 
state theory (as assumed not only by Marx) but only a state
_transition_ 
theory. 

I.e. transition is in the inner core of the capitalistic society
itself 
(as already observed in the Communist Manifesto) and speaking about 
transitions requires to explain, why and how far those remain within 
capitalistic frames and where they go beyond those frames (moving
frames!). 

I think, this should be the core of a sound P2P economic theory. I've
not 
seen even the beginning of such a theory yet. 

So far for the moment. You will find more about that in german in my 
writings. 

Best regards, 
Hans-Gert Gräbe 

-- 

Dr. Hans-Gert Graebe, apl. Prof., Inst. Informatik, Univ. Leipzig 
postal address: Postfach 10 09 20, D-04009 Leipzig 
Hausanschrift: Johannisgasse 26, 04103 Leipzig, Raum 5-18 
tel. : +49 341 97 32248 
email: graebe informatik.uni-leipzig.**de 
Home Page: http://www.informatik.uni-**leipzig.de/~graebe 

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