Dhalgren
04-12-2013, 10:08 AM
(I wasn't sure where to put this, so I put this here. If it should be moved, someone feel free - Dhalgren)
Several weeks ago, I was challenged by a liberal academic I know that “Mr. Liberal” himself, John Stuart Mill, did not agree with Marx on the way capitalism works. This academic had not read Marx, but then, I had not read Mill. We ended by simply looking at each other.
So, I read Mill’s Principles of Political Economy – I have only gotten through volume one (I dread and may skip volume two).
Here is how Mr. Mill starts off his book:
In every department of human affairs, Practice long precedes Science: systematic enquiry into the modes of action of the powers of nature, is the tardy product of a long course of efforts to use those powers for practical ends. The conception, accordingly, of Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind, and, in some, a most unduly engrossing one.
That subject is Wealth.
Here’s Mr. Marx’s start:
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.[2] Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
It isn’t so much that Mill disagrees with Marx, it is more like Marx is explaining the game of chess at a master’s level and Mill is talking about how much kids love board games. This may be unfair, but Mill’s lack of a materialist foundation makes so much of what he says insubstantial and strikingly faith-based.
The labour which terminates in the production of an article fitted for some human use, is either employed directly about the thing, or in previous operations destined to facilitate, perhaps essential to the possibility of, the subsequent ones. In making bread, for example, the labour employed about the thing itself is that of the baker; but the labour of the miller, though employed directly in the production not of bread but of flour, is equally part of the aggregate sum of labour by which the bread is produced; as is also the labour of the sower and of the reaper. Some may think that all these persons ought to be considered as employing their labour directly about the thing; the corn, the flour, and the bread being one substance in three different states. Without disputing about this question of mere language, there is still the ploughman, who prepared the ground for the seed, and whose labour never came in contact with the substance in any of its states; and the plough-maker, whose share in the result was still more remote. All these persons ultimately derive the remuneration of their labour from the bread, or its price: the plough-maker as much as the rest; for since ploughs are of no use except for tilling the soil, no one would make or use ploughs for any other reason than because the increased returns, thereby obtained from the ground, afforded a source from which an adequate equivalent could be assigned for the labour of the plough-maker. If the produce is to be used or consumed in the form of bread, it is from the bread that this equivalent must come. The bread must suffice to remunerate all these labourers, and several others; such as the carpenters and bricklayers who erected the farm-buildings; the hedgers and ditchers who made the fences necessary for the protection of the crop; the miners and smelters who extracted or prepared the iron of which the plough and other instruments were made. These, however, and the plough-maker, do not depend for their remuneration upon the bread made from the produce of a single harvest, but upon that made from the produce of all the harvests which are successively gathered until the plough, or the buildings and fences, are worn out. We must add yet another kind of labour; that of transporting the produce from the place of its production to the place of its destined use: the labour of carrying the corn to market, and from market to the miller's, the flour from the miller's to the baker's, and the bread from the baker's to the place of its final consumption. This labour is sometimes very considerable: flour is [1848] transported to England from beyond the Atlantic, corn from the heart of Russia; and in addition to the labourers immediately employed, the waggoners and sailors, there are also costly instruments, such as ships, in the construction of which much labour has been expended: that labour, however, not depending for its whole remuneration upon the bread, but for a part only; ships being usually, during the course of their existence, employed in the transport of many different kinds of commodities.
My italics – this mention of “commodities” is the first in the book. He throws it out without definition or explanation (yet he will usually define terms more than once). This is some 60 pages into the book. Mill often states the essential realities of things, but almost never explains them or will give long, overly involved illustrations that, in the end, usually cause the thread of the idea to be lost.
I have heard and read several people say that Mill is a “great writer”. I do not see it. Perhaps it is the impossible comparison with Marx – reading the two together, makes Mill almost unreadable. I think that it is more his content (or what he thinks his ‘content” is) that is the problem. Maybe his prose and erudition are “great” – it is just that those things don’t matter when the ideas are so muddy.
I could go into much more detail of comparison and contrast between Marx and Mill: Mill says labor is primarily essential for the creation of any “useful item”, but goes no further. Later in his “Value” section, he alludes to value stemming from labor, but never comes right out and says it. Mill is adamant about the total difference between “price” and “value”, but then goes on to muddle that distinction with examples that are less than stellar. Mill says that “use value” and “exchange value” are totally different – (okay, good, we are on board with that!) – then gives examples of “value” fluctuations where he is very near to equating the two. I think Mill’s biggest problem is that he is trying to evaluate and analyze a system in a vacuum; he talks a lot about “conditions”, but never sets them, and never relates any of his “laws” to any conditions; Mill’s economic laws are universal and given on tablets from above (well, at least that is how it strikes me).
But perhaps the place where his Liberal bona fides are most firmly established is in this passage from Book II Distribution, Chapter I Of Property:
It is not so with the Distribution of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms. Further, in the social state, in every state except total solitude, any disposal whatever of them can only take place by the consent of society,*2 or rather of those who dispose of its active force. Even what a person has produced by his individual toil, unaided by any one, he cannot keep, unless by the permission of society. Not only can society take it from him, but individuals could and would take it from him, if society only remained passive; if it did not either interfere en masse, or employ and pay people for the purpose of preventing him from being disturbed in the possession. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined, are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.
He doesn’t know “classes” and he doesn’t know why (nor care why) one person must be protected from another within the same society.
The opinions and feelings of mankind, doubtless, are not a matter of chance. They are consequences of the fundamental laws of human nature, combined with the existing state of knowledge and experience, and the existing condition of social institutions and intellectual and moral culture. But the laws of the generation of human opinions are not within our present subject. They are part of the general theory of human progress, a far larger and more difficult subject of inquiry than political economy. We have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed. Those, at least, are as little arbitrary, and have as much the character of physical laws, as the laws of production. Human beings can control their own acts, but not the consequences of their acts either to themselves or to others. Society can subject the distribution of wealth to whatever rules it thinks best: but what practical results will flow from the operation of those rules, must be discovered, like any other physical or mental truths, by observation and reasoning.
“Human nature”, “knowledge”, “experience”, “institutions”, “intellectual and moral culture” – that is the litany, isn’t it?
By these quotations, alone, you can see that much of what Mill’s says sounds correct, but the application of what he says to the actual subject at hand seems always to miss the mark. That being said, this passage is almost exactly what the 21st century Liberal says today. We can “decide” how to distribute wealth. All we have to do is determine how we want to do it and we can do it. Why is it distributed so badly? Well, “(w)e have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed.” Right.
In the rest, Mill is not (precisely) “inaccurate” with his analysis (once the florid language is hacked through), but he then goes nowhere with it. In his “Value” section he explains clearly that “value” equals “exchange value”; “price” and “value” are completely different; reiterates that “use value” and “value” are unrelated (in exchange); he even says that the value of an item is created during production. Then he falls into talking about “selling high” and “buying low” and “supply and demand” and “difficulty” of manufacture and – muddle.
So, I guess where all this ends up is that Mill actually agreed with almost everything Marx said about “how capitalism works”; Mill just never really grasped “why” it works the way it does and, in the end, wasn’t terribly interested in the “why”.
If anyone wants to, Mill’s Political Economy is here:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlPCover.html
Several weeks ago, I was challenged by a liberal academic I know that “Mr. Liberal” himself, John Stuart Mill, did not agree with Marx on the way capitalism works. This academic had not read Marx, but then, I had not read Mill. We ended by simply looking at each other.
So, I read Mill’s Principles of Political Economy – I have only gotten through volume one (I dread and may skip volume two).
Here is how Mr. Mill starts off his book:
In every department of human affairs, Practice long precedes Science: systematic enquiry into the modes of action of the powers of nature, is the tardy product of a long course of efforts to use those powers for practical ends. The conception, accordingly, of Political Economy as a branch of science is extremely modern; but the subject with which its enquiries are conversant has in all ages necessarily constituted one of the chief practical interests of mankind, and, in some, a most unduly engrossing one.
That subject is Wealth.
Here’s Mr. Marx’s start:
The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.
A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference.[2] Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
It isn’t so much that Mill disagrees with Marx, it is more like Marx is explaining the game of chess at a master’s level and Mill is talking about how much kids love board games. This may be unfair, but Mill’s lack of a materialist foundation makes so much of what he says insubstantial and strikingly faith-based.
The labour which terminates in the production of an article fitted for some human use, is either employed directly about the thing, or in previous operations destined to facilitate, perhaps essential to the possibility of, the subsequent ones. In making bread, for example, the labour employed about the thing itself is that of the baker; but the labour of the miller, though employed directly in the production not of bread but of flour, is equally part of the aggregate sum of labour by which the bread is produced; as is also the labour of the sower and of the reaper. Some may think that all these persons ought to be considered as employing their labour directly about the thing; the corn, the flour, and the bread being one substance in three different states. Without disputing about this question of mere language, there is still the ploughman, who prepared the ground for the seed, and whose labour never came in contact with the substance in any of its states; and the plough-maker, whose share in the result was still more remote. All these persons ultimately derive the remuneration of their labour from the bread, or its price: the plough-maker as much as the rest; for since ploughs are of no use except for tilling the soil, no one would make or use ploughs for any other reason than because the increased returns, thereby obtained from the ground, afforded a source from which an adequate equivalent could be assigned for the labour of the plough-maker. If the produce is to be used or consumed in the form of bread, it is from the bread that this equivalent must come. The bread must suffice to remunerate all these labourers, and several others; such as the carpenters and bricklayers who erected the farm-buildings; the hedgers and ditchers who made the fences necessary for the protection of the crop; the miners and smelters who extracted or prepared the iron of which the plough and other instruments were made. These, however, and the plough-maker, do not depend for their remuneration upon the bread made from the produce of a single harvest, but upon that made from the produce of all the harvests which are successively gathered until the plough, or the buildings and fences, are worn out. We must add yet another kind of labour; that of transporting the produce from the place of its production to the place of its destined use: the labour of carrying the corn to market, and from market to the miller's, the flour from the miller's to the baker's, and the bread from the baker's to the place of its final consumption. This labour is sometimes very considerable: flour is [1848] transported to England from beyond the Atlantic, corn from the heart of Russia; and in addition to the labourers immediately employed, the waggoners and sailors, there are also costly instruments, such as ships, in the construction of which much labour has been expended: that labour, however, not depending for its whole remuneration upon the bread, but for a part only; ships being usually, during the course of their existence, employed in the transport of many different kinds of commodities.
My italics – this mention of “commodities” is the first in the book. He throws it out without definition or explanation (yet he will usually define terms more than once). This is some 60 pages into the book. Mill often states the essential realities of things, but almost never explains them or will give long, overly involved illustrations that, in the end, usually cause the thread of the idea to be lost.
I have heard and read several people say that Mill is a “great writer”. I do not see it. Perhaps it is the impossible comparison with Marx – reading the two together, makes Mill almost unreadable. I think that it is more his content (or what he thinks his ‘content” is) that is the problem. Maybe his prose and erudition are “great” – it is just that those things don’t matter when the ideas are so muddy.
I could go into much more detail of comparison and contrast between Marx and Mill: Mill says labor is primarily essential for the creation of any “useful item”, but goes no further. Later in his “Value” section, he alludes to value stemming from labor, but never comes right out and says it. Mill is adamant about the total difference between “price” and “value”, but then goes on to muddle that distinction with examples that are less than stellar. Mill says that “use value” and “exchange value” are totally different – (okay, good, we are on board with that!) – then gives examples of “value” fluctuations where he is very near to equating the two. I think Mill’s biggest problem is that he is trying to evaluate and analyze a system in a vacuum; he talks a lot about “conditions”, but never sets them, and never relates any of his “laws” to any conditions; Mill’s economic laws are universal and given on tablets from above (well, at least that is how it strikes me).
But perhaps the place where his Liberal bona fides are most firmly established is in this passage from Book II Distribution, Chapter I Of Property:
It is not so with the Distribution of wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms. Further, in the social state, in every state except total solitude, any disposal whatever of them can only take place by the consent of society,*2 or rather of those who dispose of its active force. Even what a person has produced by his individual toil, unaided by any one, he cannot keep, unless by the permission of society. Not only can society take it from him, but individuals could and would take it from him, if society only remained passive; if it did not either interfere en masse, or employ and pay people for the purpose of preventing him from being disturbed in the possession. The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined, are what the opinions and feelings of the ruling portion of the community make them, and are very different in different ages and countries; and might be still more different, if mankind so chose.
He doesn’t know “classes” and he doesn’t know why (nor care why) one person must be protected from another within the same society.
The opinions and feelings of mankind, doubtless, are not a matter of chance. They are consequences of the fundamental laws of human nature, combined with the existing state of knowledge and experience, and the existing condition of social institutions and intellectual and moral culture. But the laws of the generation of human opinions are not within our present subject. They are part of the general theory of human progress, a far larger and more difficult subject of inquiry than political economy. We have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed. Those, at least, are as little arbitrary, and have as much the character of physical laws, as the laws of production. Human beings can control their own acts, but not the consequences of their acts either to themselves or to others. Society can subject the distribution of wealth to whatever rules it thinks best: but what practical results will flow from the operation of those rules, must be discovered, like any other physical or mental truths, by observation and reasoning.
“Human nature”, “knowledge”, “experience”, “institutions”, “intellectual and moral culture” – that is the litany, isn’t it?
By these quotations, alone, you can see that much of what Mill’s says sounds correct, but the application of what he says to the actual subject at hand seems always to miss the mark. That being said, this passage is almost exactly what the 21st century Liberal says today. We can “decide” how to distribute wealth. All we have to do is determine how we want to do it and we can do it. Why is it distributed so badly? Well, “(w)e have here to consider, not the causes, but the consequences, of the rules according to which wealth may be distributed.” Right.
In the rest, Mill is not (precisely) “inaccurate” with his analysis (once the florid language is hacked through), but he then goes nowhere with it. In his “Value” section he explains clearly that “value” equals “exchange value”; “price” and “value” are completely different; reiterates that “use value” and “value” are unrelated (in exchange); he even says that the value of an item is created during production. Then he falls into talking about “selling high” and “buying low” and “supply and demand” and “difficulty” of manufacture and – muddle.
So, I guess where all this ends up is that Mill actually agreed with almost everything Marx said about “how capitalism works”; Mill just never really grasped “why” it works the way it does and, in the end, wasn’t terribly interested in the “why”.
If anyone wants to, Mill’s Political Economy is here:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlPCover.html