Please Help: Marxist Critiques of von Mises Needed.

[Oswy]

Can anyone recommend a book, essay or article which specifically counters anything (and hopefully everything) that this von Mises character has said or written? I'm particularly interested in Marxist critiques of Mises' theory and arguments.

I'll be equally grateful for critiques offered in this thread, if anyone is familiar with him and has some.

Cheers!

[robbo203]

Can anyone recommend a book, essay or article which specifically counters anything (and hopefully everything) that this von Mises character has said or written? I'm particularly interested in Marxist critiques of Mises' theory and arguments.

I'll be equally grateful for critiques offered in this thread, if anyone is familiar with him and has some.

Cheers!


Try this http://www.cvoice.org/cv3cox.htm

[Zanthorus]

Honestly, all the relevant discussion points can be found in Marx, and in particular in his critiques of previous political economists. Not much changes in terms of the apologia provided for capitalism over time. Methodologically, Austrian economics begins by attempting to derive certain universally valid laws which human beings must follow, and then uses those laws to formulate economic theory. Marx is scathing of any attempts to explain the economy through any generalised theory of 'production in general', and his comments on the latter subject are limited to the first chapter of the Grundrisse. Marx's analysis of capitalism did not begin with any proclamations about 'production in general', but the about the social form of wealth which, in it's generalised form, is historically unique to capitalism. I believe Marx had even mentioned a previous political economist who, ignoring the historically specific nature of capitalism, had believed that the whole of economic history consisted of distortions of the market by the state.

The idea that capital is simply deferred consumption, and profit a reward for deferring consumption, is basically a jumped up version of Nassau Senior's theory of abstinence which Marx made a few mocking comments on in the later chapters of Capital Volume I. Essentially, it explains nothing. People were 'deferring consumption' long before the rise of capitalism as a social formation in around the 16th century and it is entirely possible to 'defer consumption' without becoming a representative of capital. If this were not the case, then capitalism would be the first we could speak of civilisation.

[ZeroNowhere]

I believe Marx had even mentioned a previous political economist who, ignoring the historically specific nature of capitalism, had believed that the whole of economic history consisted of distortions of the market by the state.May that have been Carey?


Carey, the American political economist, has brought out a new book, 'Slavery at Home and Abroad'. Here ‘slavery’ covers all forms of servitude, wage-slavery , etc. He has sent me his book in which he quotes me repeatedly (from the Tribune) now as ‘a recent English writer’, now as ‘Correspondence of The New York Tribune’. As I have told you before, this man, in his earlier works, propounds the ‘harmony’ of the bourgeoisie’s economic foundations and attributes all mischief to unnecessary interference by the State. The State was his bête noire. He is now playing a different tune. All ills are blamed on the centralising effect of big industry.

The whole profundity of those modern economists who demonstrate the eternity and harmoniousness of the existing social relations lies in this forgetting. For example. No production possible without an instrument of production, even if this instrument is only the hand. No production without stored-up, past labour, even if it is only the facility gathered together and concentrated in the hand of the savage by repeated practice. Capital is, among other things, also an instrument of production, also objectified, past labour. Therefore capital is a general, eternal relation of nature; that is, if I leave out just the specific quality which alone makes ‘instrument of production’ and ‘stored-up labour’ into capital. The entire history of production relations thus appears to Carey, for example, as a malicious forgery perpetrated by governments.

[Zanthorus]

That's the one I was thinking of, thanks :)

[Amphictyonis]

Be prepared to defend the LTV. "Well, if value isnt from labor then exploitation doesn't exist". Thats pretty much it. Mises in a nut shell. Use empirical truths to show how capitalism is exploitative rather than abstract mathematical models. Once you do that and they have no choice but to concede capitalism is exploitative.....thats when they blame the state for everything and say actual free market capitalism has never existed. Thats where you waste your time explaining to them capitalism cannot exist without a state. Clusterfudge argument in circles forever. :mad::confused::blink::blushing: Primitive accumulation is another great problem they face. In order for their system to work, in order for current monopolies to be 'abolished' we would have to....guess what....expropriate all major capitalists and start from scratch. Tear down all the factories, completley rid the world of concentrated wealth and let people all start off on equal footing. Then they have the problem of private property. They say it isn't coercion but this is because they have an idiots view of primitive accumulation. If every man were equal and had equal access to the earths resources why would one human build a factory for another human? We wouldn't. We do so because we have no other choice. Wage slavery has NEVER been voluntary it has been the product of generational dispossession via private property. Don't even get me started. I'd say it's all a waste of time even talking to these people.

The only way their system could work is if the entire globe looked like an old western town (with no industry).

[HEAD ICE]

Bukharin wrote some stuff on the Austrians here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1927/leisure-economics/index.htm

[Kibbutznik]

I'd just focus on the fact that no one within even bourgeois economics can really even take von Mises and other Austrian school economists seriously.

[ZeroNowhere]

I'd just focus on the fact that no one within even bourgeois economics can really even take von Mises and other Austrian school economists seriously.Yes, clearly we may appeal to the esteemed opinions of bourgeois economists in order to attack the Austrian school. Just make sure not to mention that you're a Marxist, though, or you may well get laughed at a bit. Because that would be a ludicrous argument to make when, you know, putting forward a view which most within bourgeois economics can't really even take seriously. Just saying.

[Jose Gracchus]

Its a model of thought that is pre-scientific, even Aristotlean. It seriously claims that in the huge field of economic social life, common to all humans, we should trust some Austrian proto-fascist noblemen economists to divine the magic "first principles" and then assert everything else from "pure logic."

Yes, it really is that stupid. They don't believe in statistical evidence and deny testable hypotheses. Its really nothing but the Intelligent Design of economics; the only reason its taken as seriously as it is, or is as common as is often found, is the utility the Austrian School has in being a propaganda device. Just flood discussion with rank religious theological nonsense and have everyone too busy refuting it to get on with talking about the real world.

[Kibbutznik]

Yes, clearly we may appeal to the esteemed opinions of bourgeois economists in order to attack the Austrian school. Just make sure not to mention that you're a Marxist, though, or you may well get laughed at a bit. Because that would be a ludicrous argument to make when, you know, putting forward a view which most within bourgeois economics can't really even take seriously. Just saying.
At the very least, Marxian economics and modern bourgeois economics reside within the same paradigm of scientific knowledge. Austrian school economics just plain rejects the entire skeptical, empirical paradigm.

[Hit The North]

At the very least, Marxian economics and modern bourgeois economics reside within the same paradigm of scientific knowledge.

Maybe classical bourgeois political economy. Certainly not "modern bourgeois economics".

[Kibbutznik]

Maybe classical bourgeois political economy. Certainly not "modern bourgeois economics".
Regardless of what they tell you, there is no conflict between marginalist theories of value and the labor theory of value.

They still are tied to the same knowledge constructions as Marxism, regardless of whether they admit it or not.

[Tim Finnegan]

Its a model of thought that is pre-scientific, even Aristotlean. It seriously claims that in the huge field of economic social life, common to all humans, we should trust some Austrian proto-fascist noblemen economists to divine the magic "first principles" and then assert everything else from "pure logic."
The weirdest bit is that, at least in the UK, at lot of the people who advocate this crap claim to oppose Marxist theory on the grounds of "British empiricism" (and occasionally "Anglo-Saxon empiricism", so as not to inadvertently lend undue credit to us superstitious Taigs).

[Jose Gracchus]

Idiots. I didn't know British intelligentsia were that racist, either.

[Agnapostate]

I'm not sure why his modern supporters even see fit to call him "von" Mises, since the Austrian nobility system was formally eliminated after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary. It is illustrative of their tacit support for class stratification. Regardless...

In the most literal sense, the classic Marxist critique of Mises specifically is Oskar Lange's On the Economic Theory of Socialism.

On the Economic Theory of Socialism: Part One (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2967660)

On the Economic Theory of Socialism: Part Two (http://www.jstor.org/stable/2967609)

This was the socialist response to the anti-socialist views advanced by Mises. The broader Austrian v. Marxist socialist calculation debate (perhaps better called the "central planning calculation debate," though capitalism is itself reliant on central planning) has advanced beyond that. Cockshott and Cottrell's Toward a New Socialism (http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/) is an example of the Marxist interest in the potential for large-scale computerized planning made possible by the Digital Revolution. Lange himself favored such a model by the end of his life.

Theodore Burczak's Socialism After Hayek (http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-after-Advances-Heterodox-Economics/dp/0472069519/) is more focused on Mises's student, Friedrich Hayek, and is interesting in that it essentially fuses Austrian principles/axioms with Marxist rules, i.e. a demonstration that Austrian first-order propositions actually support Marxist/socialist second-order propositions. It is supportive of market socialism.

[Zanthorus]

At the very least, Marxian economics and modern bourgeois economics reside within the same paradigm of scientific knowledge. Austrian school economics just plain rejects the entire skeptical, empirical paradigm.

I have no idea what the 'skeptical empirical paradigm' could mean, but there are serious methodological differences between bourgeois economics and Marxian 'economics' (Leaving aside the question of whether the volumes of Capital can be adequately read as putting forth an economic theory. In my opinion this is as misleading as saying that Marx was a 'sociologist'), namely:

(1) Marxism postulates all economic laws as historically specific whereas bourgeois economics postulates them as eternally valid wherever human beings have a need for allocating resources whcih are scarce.

(2) Marxism postulates production and the relations of production as determining all other aspects of the economy. For bourgeois economics, the relations of commodity circulation can be studied seperately from any examination of the conditions of production which generalise commodity relations. For Marx however, the commodity-form could only become the generalised social form of wealth with the generalisation of that form of the circulation of commodities which is not limited by the consumption of the immediate producers, but whose aim is nothing but the neverending relentless quest for surplus-value, the famous M - C - M' formula. This in turn was not possible without the seperation of the immediate producers from their conditions of production through primitive accumulation in the classical western capitalist countries and colonialism on the periphery, which resulted in the generalisation of 'free' wage-labour as the general social condition of labour. For bourgeois economics from Adam Smith onwards, the generalisation of market relations was the simple result of the impulse, supposedly innate to humans, to 'truck and barter'.

Without wanting to exhaust the point, what you're trying to do is combate vulgar apologism with... vulgar apologism.

[Agnapostate]

Paul Cockshott also posts here occasionally, so you could ask him directly about the relationship to the socialist calculation debate.

[TheCommonGood]

Can anyone recommend a book, essay or article which specifically counters anything (and hopefully everything) that this von Mises character has said or written? I'm particularly interested in Marxist critiques of Mises' theory and arguments.

I'll be equally grateful for critiques offered in this thread, if anyone is familiar with him and has some.

Cheers!

You've got to go right down to the base assumptions of Mises and work from there. You could point out that everyone of his theories are essentially based off greed.

[Jose Gracchus]

I have no idea what the 'skeptical empirical paradigm' could mean,

The basic assumption that claims may be subject to examination in light of future data. Austrian 'economics' denies this most basic quality of generalized 'scientific' knowledge. One can make the case that neoclassical economics is naive and illusory in light of historical information and the numerous "non-ideal" circumstances brushed aside under their childish ceteris paribus assumptions, but at least they recognize conceptually the idea of hypotheses being testable against the historical record and data of real economic experience. Neoclassical economics is bad science. Austrianism is theology.


Without wanting to exhaust the point, what you're trying to do is combate vulgar apologism with... vulgar apologism.

A query: I want to know if you contend that modern bourgeois (neoclassical, Keynesian, post-Keynesian, institutional, etc.) economics produces no testable hypotheses which conform to observable data?

[Paul Cockshott]

Here are some articles I have written criticising Mises and the Austrian school:
http://www.mltoday.com/Pages/Forum/cockshott-mises-kantorovich.html
The above deals with Mises and Kantorovich

A critique of Hayek (http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/hayek.htm) Hayek is a prominent right wing economist, a significant part of whose out has been devoted to attacking the very idea of socialism from an economic standpoint. This article isa detailed refutation to his claims that as an information processing system capitalism is superior to socialism.

Against Mises (http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/mises.htm)Von Mises was the first prominent economist to argue the impossibility of a socialist economy. His ideas continue to be recycled by opponents of socialism.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

I'd just focus on the fact that no one within even bourgeois economics can really even take von Mises and other Austrian school economists seriously.

But thats a crap argument though.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

At the very least, Marxian economics and modern bourgeois economics reside within the same paradigm of scientific knowledge. Austrian school economics just plain rejects the entire skeptical, empirical paradigm.

Where did you get this from?

Its disingenious to say that they reject the "skepitcal, emprical paradigm", as that implies they reject such a paradigm in its totality. But I don't think you'll find many Austrians claiming that they "reject" physics. You've phrased this in such a way to make austrian economists seem "crazy" or "kooky", which they people who don't like them seemingly love to try and make out they are.

And its not true they reject such a paradigm in the first place. The general view amoung austrians is that there are significant limits to the usefulness of the methadology used in other sciences to economics. Thats all.

[Paul Cockshott]

The basic assumption that claims may be subject to examination in light of future data. Austrian 'economics' denies this most basic quality of generalized 'scientific' knowledge. One can make the case that neoclassical economics is naive and illusory in light of historical information and the numerous "non-ideal" circumstances brushed aside under their childish ceteris paribus assumptions, but at least they recognize conceptually the idea of hypotheses being testable against the historical record and data of real economic experience. Neoclassical economics is bad science. Austrianism is theology.



A query: I want to know if you contend that modern bourgeois (neoclassical, Keynesian, post-Keynesian, institutional, etc.) economics produces no testable hypotheses which conform to observable data?

I would not say that of Keynesian economics, but I would argue that it applies to the basic structure of neoclassical value theory
Competing Theories: Wrong or Not Even Wrong? (http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/jelle.pdf) Paul Cockshott The paper compares the claims of marginalist theory and the labour theory of value to be scientifically founded.

[Paul Cockshott]

Its disingenious to say that they reject the "skepitcal, emprical paradigm", as that implies they reject such a paradigm in its totality. But I don't think you'll find many Austrians claiming that they "reject" physics.

What they do is make a fundamental distinction between the physical sciences and the study of society. Since the latter involves conscious agents, they say that the methods of the physical sciences are invalid. For the Austrian school the subject matter of economics is the interaction of conscious agents. I think that this view has to be decisively rejected as an idealist impediment to science. It takes an unscientific philosophical category -- the conscious subject, and uses this to draw a dividing line saying : science can not enter here. Such philosophical impediments to science, are always in the last resort politically motivated.

[Gorilla]

It really depends on which part of Mises you mean.

If it's the gold-standard fetishism then lololol. That's clearly idiocy even by bourgeois standards.

If it's marginalism vs. LTOV, then - look: Mises, Hayek etc. did economics. Marx did critique of political economy. For the isolated 1/3 of the job (neither politicized nor self-critical) that Austrianism and neoclassicism are concerned with, marginal value is a handy approximation that yields accurate results with less hassle. Sort of like you wouldn't use quantum mechanics to solve a basic engineering problem, LTOV just gets in the way if you need to calculate how many watermelons will get produced if you raise the tariff on bananas by one shilling or whatever trivial nonsense bourgeois economics concerns itself with.

As for von Mises's methodology, praxeology - he thought you could justify the divine right of capital with deductions from self-evident propositions, where neoclassical says you need to justify the divine right of capital using all kind of fiddly graphs and equations. I'm actually with the Austrians on this one, because the 'mathematics' behind neoclassical is mainly hokum.

But if it's the calculation problem of 'socialist' planning - that's a tougher one. MARX NEVER ACTUALLY ARGUES ABOUT HOW CENTRALIZED PLANNING WILL WORK. The Marxian critique of commodity exchange is not actually incompatible with the Austrian critique of central planning. There's no logical incompatibility between these two propositions:

Commodity exchange structures economic life in an exponentially more efficient way than any known method of planning.
Commodity exchange mystifies oppressive social relations and leads to overaccumulation and structural crises.


Neither one contradicts the other. Both can be true.

There's areas where planning has had far more success than the market - provision of public goods, advanced research, initial buildout of industry where it hasn't previously existed. I'm sure there are critiques of the calculation argument - some other posters have given links. But on the whole, the best argument for comprehensive planning would be a successful example of it and I don't think anyone can point one out.

So I think Marx was wise not to get bogged down in showing the optimal way to figure how many potatoes should be planted in Kazakhstan during a given year etc. Rather, he showed how the internal contradictions of commodity exchange and capital will lead to a fatal crisis, how seed-germ elements of socialized society are already being developed under capitalism.

[Jose Gracchus]

We do need to do a better job explaining and figuring out how planning will work. I think Comrade Cockshott deserves a lot of credit for moving this pertinent question forward.

[Paul Cockshott]

If it's marginalism vs. LTOV, then - look: Mises, Hayek etc. did economics. Marx did critique of political economy. For the isolated 1/3 of the job (neither politicized nor self-critical) that Austrianism and neoclassicism are concerned with, marginal value is a handy approximation that yields accurate results with less hassle. Sort of like you wouldn't use quantum mechanics to solve a basic engineering problem, LTOV just gets in the way if you need to calculate how many watermelons will get produced if you raise the tariff on bananas by one shilling or whatever trivial nonsense bourgeois economics concerns itself with.


Can you cite a single empirical study by the Austrian school that puts the theory of marginal utility to a scientific test?
It makes absolute no predictions at all about relative prices. It just says that whatever relative prices are, they must be caused by an unobservable : marginal utility.

[Paul Cockshott]

Here are some articles I have written criticising Mises and the Austrian school:
http://www.mltoday.com/Pages/Forum/cockshott-mises-kantorovich.html
The above deals with Mises and Kantorovich

.
Sorry that link was wrong it should be http://mltoday.com/subject-areas/political-economy/mises-kantorovich-and-economic-computation-327.html

[Gorilla]

Can you cite a single empirical study by the Austrian school that puts the theory of marginal utility to a scientific test?

It doesn't really bother me that marginal utility is an artificial construct. What bothers me is that the task it is constructed for is inadequate, even reactionary. 'Economics' ignores 2/3 of what needs to be done: the political and critical parts of the critique of political economy.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

What they do is make a fundamental distinction between the physical sciences and the study of society. Since the latter involves conscious agents, they say that the methods of the physical sciences are invalid. For the Austrian school the subject matter of economics is the interaction of conscious agents. I think that this view has to be decisively rejected as an idealist impediment to science. It takes an unscientific philosophical category -- the conscious subject, and uses this to draw a dividing line saying : science can not enter here. Such philosophical impediments to science, are always in the last resort politically motivated.

Its true that they do make a fundamental distinction between the physical sciences and the stidy of society, due to the latter involving concious agents, but I don't think its accurate to say they claim science cannot enter here due, on the grounds of a philospohical catagory. Its true that they're reasoning on this matter is often, I feel, dressed up with appeals to various philospohies, but I think, fundamentally, need not (and often does not) reject the "scientific method" in economics, but has reservations about that being all that is nessacary, or helpful, to get us to a correct theory.

Edit: I don't know if that counts as a rejection in your view? It seems to me that it is possible to hold that the method used in hard sciences can sometimes be appropiate in economics, and sometimes not, without rejecting the method?

[Paul Cockshott]

It doesn't really bother me that marginal utility is an artificial construct. What bothers me is that the task it is constructed for is inadequate, even reactionary. 'Economics' ignores 2/3 of what needs to be done: the political and critical parts of the critique of political economy.
What I was taking exception to was your saying " marginal value is a handy approximation that yields accurate results with less hassle. ", what accurate results?

[Gorilla]

What I was taking exception to was your saying " marginal value is a handy approximation that yields accurate results with less hassle. ", what accurate results?

Well, this is a good objection. The predictive value of neoclassical economics over time approaches zero very rapidly. Do LTV economists have a much better record though? I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on it.

[Jose Gracchus]

Austrian marginalism and neoclassical marginalism aren't quite the same thing. As stated previously, the former just make "just-so" declarative 'theories' and bury them with layers of ad hoc assertions to cover their tracks. If you try to hold their feet to the fire, they retreat to their arcane anti-empirical theology. The latter do make some econometrically provable or disprovable assertions. You can follow the math (though it is often shit).

[Luís Henrique]

Regardless of what they tell you, there is no conflict between marginalist theories of value and the labor theory of value.

Let's see. Labour theory of value tells us that the foundation of value is labour. Marginalism tells us that the foundation of labour is not labour, but rather utility. How is there no conflict?

... of course, you can dodge this by saying that LTV is a theory of value, while marginalism is a theory of price - and yes, if you do this, you can pretty much incorporate specific points of marginalists into Marxism. But let's not elude the issue: the main point, THE point of marginalism, is not to provide a theory of prices complementary to a Marxist theory of value, but to provide an alternative theory of value, opposed to that of Marx. It does that by denying the existence of any value different from price, ie, by confusing price and value.

... or you can also reach the interesting conclusion of Bastiat, that "utility" is not having to work. This, of course, reduces marginalism to an inverted version of LTV. Much like the theory of flogistics is an inverted theory of combustion. But anyway the conflict stands.

There is no way out: post-Malthus bourgeois economic "science" is not intended as research of truth, but as speculation centered upon the negation of capitalist exploitation. Yes, they can use scientific methods and reach scientific conclusions, provided that the subject is any area of economy except the relation between production and exploitation. But of course, a Ptolomaic astronomer can calculate the positions of planets with about the same precision as an astronomer. As long as their central myth - that the Earth is the centre of the Universe - isn't put into question, there is no conflict between the Ptolomaic and the Copernican theories. Same here.

Luís Henrique

[Paul Cockshott]

The link I gave earlier http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/jelle.pdf gives references to empirical work on this, as does the exchange here : http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/47872/1/47872.pdf.