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 <michel p2pfoundation.net> 03/05/12 3:15 AM >>>
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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 <hgg hg-graebe.de> 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
--
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postal address: Postfach 10 09 20, D-04009 Leipzig
Hausanschrift: Johannisgasse 26, 04103 Leipzig, Raum 5-18
tel. : +49 341 97 32248
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graebe informatik.uni-leipzig.de>
Home Page: http://www.informatik.uni-**leipzig.de/~graebe<http://leipzig.de/%7Egraebe>
<http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/%7Egraebe>
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