Double Economy I (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Thought on Giving: Toward an Aneconomic Relational Subjectivity (2014)
Reference: Becker, Brian W., David M. Goodman, and Heather Macdonald. 2014. "A thought on giving: Toward an aneconomic relational subjectivity". Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. 34 (4): 214-228. Authentic gift giving is a relational act that entails an uncoerced, selfless offering free from expectation of repayment. Such gifts are invaluable because what is actually given and received is beyond proper measure (e.g., friendship, love, life, time, etc.). In contrast, economic transactions entail relations instrumentally defined whereby owned commodities and services are exchanged for a price that is beneficial to both buyers and receivers. Some anthropologists and philosophers argue that authentic gifts are impossible because of an inescapable economic mentality that subtly dictates our thinking about relationships. In light of the rise of relational theories in psychology, we ask whether authentic gifts are possible and what conceptual implications such a prospect holds for a theory of relational subjectivity. We draw upon the work of contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion who shows that the logic of the economy is founded upon and supported by the Western metaphysical assumptions of causality. Marion’s phenomenological method establishes possible gifts irreducible to abstract or subjective causes and, therefore, exceeding economic logic. Accordingly, thinking about gifts beyond causality requires rethinking the nature of givers and receivers in noneconomic terms. Doing so leads to the conceptual possibility for the formation of an aneconomic relational subjectivity, which Marion calls ‘the gifted.’
The economics of empiricism and relation exchange
2016
Orthodox economics is built on the assumption of the premise that any economic instance can be consistently measured in the value-cost index. Upon the measurement of values and costs, the optimization-equilibrium algorithm builds the analytical architecture of the orthodox economics. It is the closed/determinate system because every instance of the economy is recognized as the outcome of the optimization-equilibrium algorithm. However, the behavioral actions of individuals take place in the state of nature, that is, particular personal conditions without the screening of the state of nature through the veil of ignorance. The historical coincidence and path dependence give rise to particular personal conditions, which are unable to be sorted out by the optimization-equilibrium algorithm of the orthodox economics. Human life abides in the realm of the empiricism, not of the rationalism (Hume 1937, 1948). It is the open/indeterminate system. The scientific method of inductive reasoning works in the open/indeterminate system, whereas deductive reasoning holds in the closed/determinate system. The sympathy-consent process is the method of epistemology which leads to the action of relation exchange, which is deemed the most primitive works of our daily life. The paper vindicates the fundamentality of relation exchange visa -vis value exchange of the orthodox economics. The sympathy-consent process is path dependent, which leads to the path dependence of relation exchange. The prominent finding of the research is that the price determination becomes path dependent in the sympathy-consent dimension. It is denoted as inductive price.
On Natural-Social Commodities. The Form and Value of Things.
This article re-reads Marx's account of the commodity as a socio-natural entity. In doing so, it re-evaluates the status of the political (as opposed to questions of political economy) in Marx's analysis and also reads his argument in light of Actor-Network-Theory's call for the thingness of things to be taken seriously. The paper argues that there is a complex duality to the commodity as it is always comprised of both use-value and exchange-value and hence as both 'natural' and 'social'. It is pointed out that the usual translation of words with the root 'gesellschaft-' as 'social' is unhelpful and that a better term would be 'societal', as this enables Marx, and us, to re-approach the very distinction between the natural, the societal and the social. Marx's notion of 'value as equivalence' is then outlined and it is argued that this crucial stage in his account is often passed over. Value as equivalence is not a mere social production but relies upon the expression of the use-value of one thing in another. This leads to the third move which is an outline of the importance of value-form and social form. It is argued that it is this formation of a commodity (comprising both the natural and the social) which is the key both to understanding it as a specific historical entity as well as offering a powerful, non-reductive, account of the natural, social, material and historical character of things. Overall, the article attempts to develop a novel conception of natural-social commodities which does not premise either side of this dyad and so might help social theorists to talk of real things whilst avoiding charges of essentialism and reductionism as well as possible Latourian critiques of over-generalization.
The Dialectic of First and Second Nature - Enlightenment and Exchange Value
The fundamental problem behind the tyranny of abstraction is shown to concern how forms of human life come to assume an independence of the human beings who have created them in their process of producing their social life. This indicates the reification of forms of social action. The central theme is the paradox of how human agency is transformed into human enslavement. One comes back to money as the expression of the reified character of the forms of human life.
There is growing awareness of the need for interdisciplinary research on complex issues, but also of the obstacles that historical boundaries between social disciplines pose to such dialogue. It is increasingly recognized that the somewhat constitutive autonomy, the progressive autonomization, and finally the “imperialism” of economics have severely reduced the possibility of interdisciplinary discussion. This paper is to be considered as an introduction to a research programme on the foundations of a non-imperialist economics. It investigates gift exchange as a missed opportunity for economics. It aims at showing that, by refusing to tackle the complexity of the gift, economics has not only lost an opportunity to develop a method suitable for the analysis of complex problems, but has voluntarily chosen not to follow a path which would have prevented it from colonizing other disciplines. Reintroducing the concept of gift into the economic discourse may thus represent a required precondition to produce an innovating discourse on economics.
A dialogue concerning the two chief systems of value
1998
This paper was presented to the Brasilian Society for Political Economy at its 1998 conference. It presents the principal differences between the temporal and the simultaneist approach to the theory of value. It was the first paper to present a formal conceptual analogy between the temporal approach in economics, and the Galilean approach in astronomy. At that time, the problem which I sought to address was, how is retrogression possible in economic thought? This same question is at the centre of my response to Laibman in 'The new value controversy in economics'.
Istanbul University Journal of Sociology, 2019
Recognizing the convergence of renewed scholarly interest in the sacred and sacrifice, and debates about fiscal sacrifices in recent economic history, this rethinking of Durkheim develops a symptomatic reading of his theory of sacrifice in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. The paper argues that Durkheim's suppression of political economic sensibilities in The Forms leads him to generate a fetishistic account of sacrifice as a moral activity that renews existing bases of rule. His analysis does so because it fails to adequately account for the role of structured inequalities in the production of the rite. A radical Durkheimian political economy of sacrifice is reclaimed by critically synthesizing it with the Foucauldian concept of dispositifs, one better able to account for the contingent combination of knowledge control, inequality, and exclusion on moral life. The critical theoretical work is applied to the axiological implications of neoliberal individualism, highlighting that it depends on and disavows sacrifice, specifically the sacrificing of people's capacity for altruism (or, the sacrifice of sacrifice). Finally, Durkheim's heterological sensibilities about the constitutive potential of the sacred in moments of collective effervescence are used to put the politics back in this political economy of sacrifice.
The Process of Exchange from Phenomenological Perspective
This short essay will be an attempt to analyze the exchange of money and commodities in terms of framework offered by phenomenology. Marx’s Capital is an utterly phenomenological work in the Hegelian sense of this notion. Marx conceptualizes phenomenology as a method of exposing the real-world phenomena that is prior to abstract philosophical inquiry. In the first volume of Capital Marx introduces explanatory categories of the German Idealism to “purely” economical and social issues. This sense his analysis is close to the one found in Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things. Foucault, who is mainly preoccupied with understanding the establishment of certain subject (in this context the modern economic subject), deals here with the notion of wealth and elaborates changing relations between money and prices between 15th and late 17th century, as well as such issues as mercantilism, utility and creation of value. There are significant differences between Marx’s and Foucault’s approach. Whereas Foucault’s analysis is oriented towards the hermeneutics and deconstruction of the notion of exchange as a constitutive activity of the subject, Marx is mainly preoccupied with the description of the activity of exchanging and its consequences. However, even though conclusions of Capital and The Order of Things differ significantly, the method of analysis reveals many similarities. Thus, both texts operate with a structure of deeper understanding of exchange as a multi-layer process of signification, accumulation, and transformation. The essay is an attempt to briefly analyze all of these functions of the exchange process as well as to indicate a new interpretation that arises from the framework offered by both authors.
The Economy of Sacrifice and Embodiment
When we think of sacrifice, two meanings come to the fore. There is, first of all, the intersubjective, human meaning where we speak of sacrifice for others. Such sacrifices transcend the economy of exchange. They are not transactional. The second, religious meaning, however, is transactional. It signifies the rites of making offerings to the gods. Here, as Plato remarks, prayer and sacrifice is what we offer to the gods; in return they provide us with their benefits. These meaning involve opposing concepts. The human meaning assumes that individuals can transcend the economy; the religious meaning places them within it, making them trading partners with the gods. The religious meaning thus implies the immanence of both ourselves and the divine in the economy, while the human meaning signifies our transcendence of it. What do these different implications point to? Is there a way to think them together to come up with a coherent concept? In this article, I outline the various attempts to understand sacrifice in terms of an economy. I then propose an answer to these questions in terms of our embodiment. My argument is that the very embodiment that places us, through our needs, in an economy also works to interrupt it.