further points on markets

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further points on markets

by Mine Aysen Doyran

01 December 1999 06:19 UTC

on markets. the important question is how we should define markets without falling into ahistoricism. I think that it all depends on how strong our theoretical abstractions are. if i define "market" as a "product of social relations" or "invention of human collective will", i already define it as a historical relationship. "social" is already implicit in the definition. in order words, this abstraction is not a "transhistorical" abstraction because it allows me to "project" into "historical concreteness". what we should recognize is that theorizing and historicising are not separate activities. they are already dialectically related, just like "theory" and "praxis", "thinking and being". one can not historicise without
"theorizing" or "theorize" without "historicizing"; they are in unity with each other

think about "labor". didn't marx give a "theoretical abstraction" of labor in the first place? of course, he did. consider the following from the Manuscripts and the German Ideology:

"The Individual is the social being"

"Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product and remains so long as men exist at all"

"Labor as creator of use values, as useful labor, is a condition of human existence which is independent of all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between men and nature, adn therefore human life itself" (Capital, p. 133).

the point is that Marx also constructed theoretical abstractions. however, his abstractions are not "transhistorical" abstractions. on the contrary, they are useful analytical constructs (slave, vassal, wage laborer) which allow us to make sense of production relations under particular historical circumstances. if marx did not define labor in some abstract sense, he could not have explained "alienation of labor" at all
(under capitalism).

poor social scientists, like Milton Friedaman, of course, goes far back to Athenian civilization to prove "capitalist markets". his big theoretical mistake is confusion of markets with capitalism and pre-capitalist social relations with capitalist social formations. he is projecting backwards in history. absurdity and ideology par excellence!!!

Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222

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