Hegel

[Knotted]

Except for the transformation problem, which completely invalidates Marx's theory.

The labour theory of value is a misnomer. It isn't a theory at all, its just a definition. It can't be invalidated. Marx never called it a theory himself. The transformation problem merely shows that the 'labour theory of value' is not as useful as Marx would have hoped - it fails to demonstrate nicely the theory (and this is a theory) of the tendency of the profit rate to fall. This problem doesn't mean that the profit rate doesn't tend to fall. [The transformation problem is the problem of showing that the total surplus value is the same as the total profit].

While I'm on it, Hegel never had any doctrine about the interpentration of the opposites. That's Engels' expression. Engels also talked about the identity of opposites which is much closer to what Hegel was on about. Engels was trying to find dialetics in nature (ie. very general laws of nature) which is why he gives dialectics a dynamic spin. I think he was misguided on this. However, he's still well worth reading on Hegel & dialectics etc.

 

[Santino]

The labour theory of value is a misnomer. It isn't a theory at all, its just a definition. It can't be invalidated. Marx never called it a theory himself. The transformation problem merely shows that the 'labour theory of value' is not as useful as Marx would have hoped - it fails to demonstrate nicely the theory (and this is a theory) of the tendency of the profit rate to fall. This problem doesn't mean that the profit rate doesn't tend to fall. [The transformation problem is the problem of showing that the total surplus value is the same as the total profit].

Maybe I am getting two things confused. What is the name of the problem that describes the fact that labour-intensive industries don't produce as much profit as automated industries, despite the theory that profit is derived from labour?

 

[Knotted]

Maybe I am getting two things confused. What is the name of the problem that describes the fact that labour-intensive industries don't produce as much profit as automated industries, despite the theory that profit is derived from labour?

You're thinking of the tendency of the profit rate to fall. Its quite a complex and carefully stated theory, with all sorts of exceptions and countertendencies, but the gist is simple enough.

A particular company which introduces greater automation will do so to gain an edge over its competitors - it makes greater profits. As its competitors catch up this edge is lost and the capitalist class as a whole can extract less surplus from the working class as surplus value dervies from labour invested into production. No problem so far. The problem is showing that this translates into a declining profit rate.

 

[butchersapron]

To go back to the transformation 'problem' for oen sec (which, as noted above, is not really anything to do with the tendency of the profit rate to fall) - something which did cause problems for those who need to insist on marx having an always entirely consistent approach to all things at all times (or even a cast-iron model), this has now been overcome with the development of the Temporal single-system interpretation (for those who need that sort of thing).

 

[Knotted]

Its worth understanding that Piero Sraffa who took the transformation problem seriously, had a much more devastating critique of the assumptions of neo-classical economics - marginal utility etc. The neo-classical answer was just that the theory works. I think the scientific standards of Marxist theory are higher than that of mainstream economics.

 

[Knotted]

OK a concise summary of the importance of Hegel:

Firstly there is the richness of German idealism. The richness consists of tremendous muddle-headedness, but that's what you want in philosophy - philosophy is about stating the obvious, if you simply get on and state it like the English philosophers tended to then this is just incredibly dull.

Secondly Hegel was the first of his generation to stop seeing philosophy as being about introspection. The transcendental philosophers and the romantics thought that to know the subject meant to know the object and ultimately the whole of nature (usually called 'Nature'). They might have differed on how knowable the subject is, but essentially German philosophy amounted to little more than navel-gazing. They looked into themselves in order to understand the world. With Hegel's completely different (but screamingly mad) realistic idealism the world becomes a world of thought and human affairs become central to philosophy rather than merely philosophy being central to human affairs.

Thirdly, due to Hegel's (screamingly mad) realistic idealism and in particular the Heraclitan influence on Hegel, ideas loose their simple fixedness. Ideas are as rich and as fluid as the world in which we live. Even though Hegel is not a very talented philosopher, his dialectical method (which amounts to little more than steam rolling philosophical puzzles into his system by finding an unattractive way of talking about them) provides a good model for a form of reasoning for escaping more rigid metaphysical modes of thought. (See Engels on this.)

Fourthly his stupid system (consisting of philosophy battered to buggery by one of the world's most dreary philistines) provides a good platform from which to survey philosophy in general. He's an awful philosopher, but he's a good housemaid. He put's things in their proper places. (Compare with Wittgenstein's similar anti-theoretical stance - don't theorise rather arrange things so that they make sense.)

 

[gorski]

Just ignore him - must be drunk...

 

[Knotted]

Just ignore him - must be drunk...

I should probably say I was even if I wasn't.

I've stupidly missed an important point.

Point 2.5:
Maybe out of sheer hubris, or maybe out of sheer dullness, Hegel is thoroughly consistent in every respect. From the Hegelian standpoint it is clear that half-way houses - dualism, eclecticism, transendentalism etc. - are just ugly compromises (contrast especially with Kant and Schelling). Hegel's consistent idealist monism cleared the way for Marx and Engels consistent materialist monism. See Plekhanov on this.

Hegel’s idealist philosophy itself contains the very best, the most irrefutable proof of the inconsistency of idealism. But at the same time it teaches us consistency in thought, and whoever goes through its stern school with love and attention will acquire for ever a salutary repugnance for eclectic mish-mash....
'sright.

 

[gorski]

As I promised earlier: A. Gethmann-Siefert [published in Hegel-Studien] studied Hegel's public lectures in depth, stating that in them he was problematising his own system, as he was developing it: what came out of it is that, by its very own logic, earlier versions were not at all so "finished", i.e. done and dusted [read "closed"] as the latter ones...