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April 24, 2006
I see that Long Sunday is having a symposium on Gayatri Spivak, with the primary text being Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value. Despite her work being at the intersection of marxism, feminism and deconstruction I haven't read many of her texts because she is primarily a literary theoriest.
We can see this in her opening remarks in the 'on the Question of Value' essay where she says that the issue of cvalue surfaces in literary criticism with reference to canon-formation with the question of why a canon? What is the ethico-political agenda that operates a canon? The desire is for an alternative canon formations. Hence the concern is with literary value in a world of domination not ethical value in the sense of easing the suffering of human beings.
Spivak's essay proper moves into a discussion of Marx's use and exchange value of commodities without her making any move to natural (ecological) or intrinsic value or the dialectic of economic categories that Marx modelled on Hegel. This whole question of the way that every science necessarily evolves through its own categories and that it is only through the development of such categories that thought is able to gain a more rigorous understanding of the objects and processes it is studying is sidestepped. At one point Spivak says that 'the self-determination fo the concept capital can be turned backward and forward and every which way' (p.5) Well, Hegel and Marx insisted on the objectivity of the basic categories of thought; argued that new concepts arise in science because, penetrating ever more deeply into the world of phenomena, reveals new aspects of these phenomena which simply cannot be fitted into the existing categories of thought; emphasised the logic in the development of the categores---an immanent progression of categories. Moreover, Marx tried to show the necessity of the categories of political economy as a reflection of the developing and unfolding social practice of human beings.
The text becomes more rigorous.
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I think it is important for philosophically-oriented humans, and even sociologically-oriented humans, to question the literary aspects of much of "postmodernism" or what is now known as "theory." There are all sorts of reasons to object to the aestheticizing of academia and of politics, and I wager Marx himself would most likely agree. Is that Spivak/LS/Valve discussion about economic value, ethical "values", or the psychology of "value"? The chat shifts from one to the other with nary a break in speed.
Tho' positivism is now anathema one might at least question whether a term such as "value" --even in strictly economic sense--has some clear, objective definition.
Use and exchange value may perhaps be distinguished--tho' in many cases objects might have both qualities, or become interchangable, or be sort of variable--humans obviously differing greatly on what they value in particular (use value, tho' even with UV there are different/subjective types of needs); and exchange value also subject at least to market forces, supply-demand (granting that that Smithian model is not always accurate); then the relation of exchange value to price is hardly clear, either for marxists or for pointy-headed capitalists. Better to start from consumer models modified by a type of consequentialism: what are the consequences (measurable--biological, economic, political) of millions of people wanting a particular item or commodity ? (say beef or oil) . And that might suffice for progressive politics without re-entering the marxist or Smithian labyrinth.Which is to say, I think semi-awake filosophes of all types have plenty of reasons to object to academic economics, whether capitalist or anti-capitalist. Galbraith himself so objected.