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Postmodern Political Economy
Introduction
The postmodern
break from the 'modern episteme' has produced a rich
spectrum of alternative paradigms proposing a
radically critical rethinking of modern discursive
practices. Hypothesizing discursively produced,
incommensurable and irreducibly different categories
of knowledge, the 'postmodern ethos' breaks from and
poses a profound challenge to the 'modern logos'
with its transtheoretic criteria for singularly
objective scientific truths.
Underlying the
postmodern critique of the 'modern episteme' is a
Nietzschean project of unmasking the illusion of
rationally determinable, transdiscursively valid
objective truths by deconstructing the very
foundations legitimizing 'modern science' as an
objective truth-seeking/generating enterprise.
Neither the empiricists' unmediated experience nor
the rationalists' self-sufficient reason can secure
metadiscursive foundations for thought and action.
From a postmodern standpoint, there are neither
metadiscursive foundations to legitimize modern
discursive practices, which subsume the grand
intellectual vision of Enlightenment with its
generic anthropocentric claims to establish criteria
for transdiscursively valid objective knowledge, nor
a universal and transdiscursive metalanguage to
articulate such knowledge. Ruling out the singular
objective truths captured by the scientific
statements of a universal and transdiscursive
metalanguage, the rhetoric of postmodern inquiry
resorts to a plurality of language games with
distinctive rules and truth criteria establishing
the intratheoretic validity of discourse-dependent
statements. The postmodern thought game is one of
pluralistic play of incommensurable paradigms with
no intertheoretic criteria for scientific
truths.
The deconstructive intrusion of the idea of
incommensurability into the domain of scientific
knowledge has profound implications for the future
prospects of scientific practices. The
deconstruction of the epistemic confidence in
science as a privileged modern myth, a grand
discourse claiming to have transdiscursively
captured the singular objective truths, opens the
door to a rich array of new directions for
scientific practices preaching a pluralism of
praxis and thought as opposed to the singularism
underlying modern scientific discourses. The
'postmodern ethos' -with the vision of multiplicity
it promotes, the epistemic freedom it brings about,
and the creative agony it stimulates- may generate
a broad matrix of new possibilities for a
reconstruction of the 'modern cogito' that may have
already reached the limits of its creative impulse.
Postmodern Marksism represents one such innovative
possibility for a deconstructive reconstruction of
'modern thought'. The particular deconstruction
undertaken by the proponents of postmodern Marksism
centers around the key Althusserian concepts of
'overdeter-mination' and 'contradiction' which,
together, signify a discursive perspective that
rules out essentialisms/foundationalisms of all
kinds in epistemology and ontology. Any entity
whether of ontic or epistemic character is
complexly constituted by all the influences
emanating from every other entity. Entities 'only
exist as effects of and by virtue of influences from
all other similarly constituted entities' (Resnick
and Wolff, 1988:52). There are no
essential/foundational determinants of any social
process or of truth.
Refining and
rearticulating the Althusserian notions of
overdeter-mination and contradiction in such a way
as to displace ontic and epistemic foundationalisms
of all kinds, Resnick and Wolff develop a uniquely
Marksist postmodern discourse that traces its
postmodern roots from such Marksist figures as
Althusser, Gramsci and Lukacs back to Marx. Though
they share with other postmodernists the spirit of
the Nietzschean project in its relentless
denunciation of the foundations legitimizing the
illusion of transtheoretically valid, rationally
determinable objective truths, their postmodernism
differs from that of others not only in its Marksist
class analytical content, but also in its
distinctive emphasis on what might be called
'overdetermined contradictions' in their discursive
analysis of knowledge and society. The notion of
'overdetermined contradictions', as a postmodern
construct, both accounts for the postmodern nature
of their Marksism and, at the same time, makes it
differ from other paradigms within the postmodern
framework. Furthermore, being an organizing focus
with a distinctive discursive privilege, it plays a
key role in their break from the modern practice of
economics. Hypothesizing a view of economic process
existing in ceaseless change through complexly
interwoven overdetermined contradictions,
postmodern Marksist discourses break from and
displace the equilibrium vision of economic
phenomena underlying modern mainstream theoretical
practices in economics. However, as will be argued
in this paper, despite the dominant
anti-equilibrium tone implicit in the methodology
of postmodern Marksist works such as those of
Resnick and Wolff, various notions of equilibrium
are paradoxically present in much of their
substantive analysis- hence rendering their break
from the modern mainstream practice of economics
incomplete.
Equilibrium and Contradiction; The Paradox
Though the concept
of equilibrium serves as a central organizing
metaphor primarily within the conventional
disciplinary matrices of the neoclassical research
program, its use (role) in the metaphorical
representation of economic phenomena, however unique
and discourse-specific, seems to have transcended
the boundaries of alternative economic paradigms.
Abstracting from the complications associated with
the issues of uncertainty/expectations and
intertemporal/inters-patial connotations of the
concept, elementary applications of the idea of
equilibrium in contesting economic discourses have
taken mainly the following forms, as exemplified by
Milgate (1987:179): equilibrium is taken to signify
a 'state of rest' from which there is no endogenous
tendency to move away; stationary or steady states
exhibit this kind of property. Or it is regarded as
a 'balance of forces', as when, for instance, it is
used to describe the idea of a balance between
supply and demand.
Alternatively, it
is thought of as that outcome which any given
economic process might be 'tending towards', as in
the idea that competitive processes tend to produce
determinate outcomes. One can add to this list the
refined definitions of equilibrium as solution
concepts in its static and dynamic varieties as
well as its game theoretic re-conceptualizations
incorporating strategic interactions of the agents.
However it is defined or conceptualized, the idea of
(economic) equilibrium, in general, signifies the
existence of a harmonious state which is presumed to
reflect the characteristics of the economic
phenomena under consideration.
The concept of
contradiction, on the other hand, rests upon a
perception of reality characterized by conflicts
rather than harmony. The semantic content of
contradictions in Marksian literature, in general,
refers to conflicts, tensions and incompatibilities
within (or among) entities 'pulling and pushing them
in different directions' as to produce change(s)
through a process of negation. With respect to the
time pattern of their existence, contradictions can
be presumed to signify either a 'temporary' or an
'ever-present' phenomenon. We will propose two
different notions of contradiction to conceptualize
this distinction: A notion of temporarily present
contradictions posits an ontological posture of
entities in which contradictions appear and
disappear periodically. Contradictions are present
when an entity is in a 'state of unrest' resulting
from the conflicts, tensions and incompatibilities
the resolution of which is presumed to bring about a
'state of rest' characterized by the absence of
contradictions. That is to say, contradictions
appear and disappear periodically as a 'state of
rest' evolves into a 'state of unrest' which, in
turn, evolves into a 'state of rest', exhibiting a
cyclical pattern over time A notion of ever-present
contradictions, on the other hand, hypothesizes a
permanent/continuous state of unrest signifying the
relentless play of an infinite number of factors
ceaselessly changing the specific phenomena under
consideration. Contradictions, from this
perspective, are not of a temporary character,
rather they are 'ever-present' features of entities.
The notions of
contradiction articulated above relate to the idea
of equilibrium in different ways. The contradictions
of the 'temporary' kind are not necessarily
incompatible with a notion of equilibrium, for the
idea of a 'state of rest' common to the
characterization of both could function as a point
of reference for a correspondence between the
equilibrium/disequilibrium states and the states
characterized by the absence/presence of
contradictions. A harmonious state of rest free of
contradictions, for instance, could be interpreted
as an equilibrium. The contradictions of the
'ever-present' kind, in contrast, are inherently
incompatible with a notion of equilibrium
hypothesizing a state of rest where forces affecting
an entity balance each other out. Every entity is
presumed to be full of contradictions restlessly
pulling and pushing it in a variety of often
conflicting directions, hence making it impossible
to reach a harmonious state of rest that could be
interpreted as an equilibrium.
The notion of contradiction employed in postmodern
Marksist works is of the 'ever-present' kind. Any
overdetermined entity is full of conflicts, tensions
and impulses generating a ceaseless process of
change with no 'point of rest'. Equilibrium, in this
ceaselessly changing overdetermined web of
contradictory impulses, appears to be an
impossibility. However, paradoxical as it may seem,
despite the anti-equilibrium methodology and the
implicit, yet methodologically self-conscious,
anti-equilibrium rhetoric of postmodern Marksist
inquiry, the idea of equilibrium pervades much of
the substantive postmodern Marksist analysis. We
will selectively draw upon and interpret the
postmodern reformulations of theory of value and
theory of class to exemplify the scope (and the
nature) of equilibrium thinking in this newly
emerging research program.
In their
1984-article in the Review of Radical Political
Economics, Wolff, Callari and Roberts present a
non-essentialist formulation of value to offer an
alternative solution to the transformation problem.
Value, in this unique formulation, is not to be
conceived as the essence of price, rather as an
overdetermined category constituted by the
conditions of capitalist production as well as
circulation. An explicit recognition of the complex
interdependence between production and circulation
-hence, between value and price- is the key to the
authors' solution to the transformation problem. As
opposed to the traditional view of transformation
as 'the derivation of a single set of dependent
variables (production prices) from a given set of
purely production-determined values', the authors
present a mode of transformation in which commodity
values themselves are dependent variables which must
be solved for alongside the other unknowns in the
system. They proceed to articulate the unique
features of their solution by showing how it does
indeed coincide with Marx's own solution.
Though the authors' intervention in the
transformation debate has radically new qualitative
dimensions, their formal/quantitative solution to
the transformation problem remains firmly tied to
the conventional equilibrium framework. The formal
model presented in the paper is a static linear
Marksian model with a transformation system to be
solved for commodity values, prices of production
and a uniform profit rate given the values of the
system's parameters such as technical coefficients
of production, a real wage bundle, etc. The authors'
formulation exhibits all the key properties of an
equilibrium solution to the transformation problem:
a uniform profit rate and stationary prices as
solution values of the system representing the
determinate outcome of the competitive process.
However unique the
authors' solution to the transformation problem is,
a quantitative solution of a static equilibrium kind
does not capture the qualitative dimensions of an
overdeterminist formulation that emphasizes the
mutually constitutive, contradictory and
ever-changing aspects of the value/price formation
process. From an overdeterminist viewpoint,
features of static equilibrium solutions to the
transformation problem- i.e. a uniform profit rate
and stationary prices of production- must be seen as
at best problematic, for the constant state of
'flux' characterizing the overdetermined process of
price formation is likely to render the uniform
profit rate and stationary prices of static
equilibrium solutions unattainable both in the short
run and in the long run. The problematic nature of
equilibrium solutions seems to have produced a
considerable discontent in the literature as well.
Critics of different persuasions questioned the
validity of static equilibrium solutions by
pointing out the problems associated with the
uniform rate of profit (Webber 1989, Nikiado 1978)
and stationary prices (Naples 1989). There is a
discernible tendency to move away from static
equilibrium formulations and towards dynamic
non-equilibrium reformulations of the
transformation problem.
Exploring possible algorithms for dynamic,
non-equilibrium solutions to the transformation
problem -such as the one suggested by Naples
(1989)- may prove to be quite productive in weaving
the overde-terminist insights into a coherent whole.
What present formulations of the overdeterminist
approach lack is the design of specific
mechanisms/algorithms for a time-inclusive, dynamic
interaction of the contradictory and mutually
constitutive aspects of economic processes. It seems
ironic for a discursive perspective privileging
'continuous change through contradictions' to
remain within a static framework with no explicit
dimension of time. Overdeterminist formulations of
the transformation problem need to be moved away
from the static equilibrium framework so as to be
situated within a time-inclusive, dynamic analysis
of the contradictory and mutually constitutive
relations among production, circulation and
accumulation.
The deep-rooted
influences of equilibrium thinking can also be
observed in the overdeterminist reformulation of
Marksian class analysis. 'Class', in its
non-essentialist reformulation, refers to the
overdetermi-ned processes of production,
appropriation and distribution of surplus labor. The
class process, like any and every other
overdetermined social process, is presumed to have
"no existence other than as the site of the
converging influences exerted by all the non-class
processes. All the other processes that combine to
overdetermine it are its conditions of existence"
(Resnick and Wolff, 1987a: 116). Being each other's
condition of existence, the relationship between
class and non-class processes is one of mutual
constitution preventing any one process from
playing the role of being the essential determinant
of the other. Thus, 'class', in postmodern Marksist
discourses, does not function as an 'essence' but
as a conceptual entry point at which one begins to
enter into the analysis of social totality, hence of
all social sites such as capitalist enterprises,
households, etc.
The formal class analytics of different social sites
in Resnick and Wolffs discourse is captured by the
social site specific 'class-structural equation'
specifying the precise ways in which the process of
distributing the surplus (subsumed class process)
secures its continued production and appropriation
(fundamental class process)5. The
class-structural equation of a capitalist
enterprise, for instance, represents the
equation-form of the relation between the
appropriated surplus value (SV) and the sum of
various subsumed class payments (SSCPs) made to
secure the conditions of existence of surplus
appropriation, i.e. SV=SSCPs
As long as the
relation indicated by the equation holds as an
equality, the appropriated surplus in the
capitalist enterprise is sufficient to make the
distributions needed to secure the conditions of
existence of the surplus appropriation, and hence of
the enterprise's reproduction. However, the point
where the relation is transformed into an inequality
-signifying the insufficiency of the appropriated
surplus as compared to the needed subsumed class
payments- signals a crisis for the capitalist
enterprise that needs to be addressed through
appropriate corrective measures restoring the
equality.
The discursive construction underlying the class
analytical framework presented above lies, In
significant ways, within the boundaries of
equilibrium thinking. The specific formulation
relating the fundamental class process to its
conditions of existence implies that the class
structure of a social site is in a state of
equilibrium when sufficient numbers of its
conditions of existence are secured so as to ensure
its reproduction. In other words, the equilibrium
state is a state in which the social site
continually reproduces its class structure. The
class structural equation is nothing but the formal
expression of an equilibrium condition describing
the balance between the appropriated surplus and
the subsumed class payments that need to be made to
secure the conditions of existence of the
appropriation of surplus and hence of the
reproduction of the social site's class structure. A
deviation from the state of equilibrium -such as an
inequality in the class-structural equation-
represents a crisis (a disequilibrium) to be dealt
with through appropriate corrective mechanisms
restoring the equilibrium. This is precisely the
logic of argumentation underlying Res-nick and
Wolffs 'Tale of two crises in enterprise and
households under Reaganomics' (1990) where they
present a class analytical explanation of the ways
in which Reaganomics represented a corrective
response to the specific crisis of capitalist
enterprises that developed across the 1970s due to
the cumulative impact of large and rising subsumed
class demands exceeding the appropriated surplus
value available to meet them:
"Reaganomics had
moved systematically towards correcting the
enterprise crisis it confronted by reestablishing
an equilibrium between the production/appropriation
of surplus value, on the one hand, and its
distribution to secure conditions of existence, on
the other. It raised surplus value by driving down
private wages, while it reduced the sum of subsumed
class payments by lowering the federal government's
demands for corporate taxes". (Resnick and Wolff,
1990:18-19). Though Reaganomics, in the authors'
view, solved the enterprise crisis, it did so by
plunging a completely different social site in the
United States -the households- into a parallel
crisis. Reagan's assault on governmental social
programs, shifting many household expenses back onto
families, and the accelerated exodus of housewives
into the labor market with falling wages resulted in
a conjuncture in which the surplus produced by women
within households became insufficient to secure the
conditions of existence of the household's class
structure (Resnick and Wolff, 1990:19-26). In other
words, the Reaganomic solution restoring the
equilibrium in capitalist enterprises created a
chronic disequilibrium in households which, the
authors argue, could well undermine the Reaganomic
solution itself by producing a fall in workers'
productivity, a change in mass consciousness, etc.
That is to say, the solution that restores the
equilibrium in enterprises tends to undermine itself
by creating a contradictory dynamic that distorts
the very equilibrium it is intended to restore. The
reasoning implicit in the authors' argumentation
thus displays a notion of equilibrium in a Hegelian
mode, locating the equilibrium states within a
contradictory process of change undermining the very
equilibrium a social site is supposed to maintain.
Yet, the mode of equilibrium reasoning employed by
the authors, however Hegelian its manifestations may
be, is incompatible with the notion of
overdetermination they articulate, for the logic of
overdetermination, in its anti-equilibrium
connotations manifest in what it requires to be
contradictory and ceaselessly changing processes
with no point of rest, rules out the 'moments' of
equilibrium in all theoretically feasible
overdeterminist characterizations of economic
processes.
Concluding
The paradoxical coexistence of irreconcilable
equilibrium and anti-equilibrium representations of
economic phenomena in postmodern Marksist works
signifies the difficulty of making a complete break
from the modern practice of economics. Roots of
equilibrium thinking are too deep to completely
break free from. Nevertheless, however incomplete
their break may be, postmodern Marksist discourses
add something unique and distinctive to a
non-modern reconstruction of economic theory by
articulating a notion of 'ceaseless
change-provoking' causality (overdetermination)
undermining the metaphorical basis of equilibrium
reasoning and ruling out determinisms of all kinds.
Distinctive contributions of overdeterminist
formulations open up a new avenue for Marksist (as
well as non-Marksist) research that could be further
enriched and extended through a fruitful exchange
with other non-modern paradigms such as the
non-equilibrium paradigm of Mandelbrot (1987)
proposing an indeterministic stochastic
reconcep-tualization of economic phenomena. Having
already exhausted much of the innovative potential
of the Althusserian episteme, the further
development of postmodern Marksism appears to lie,
in important respects, in a creative search for new
ways to enrich and extend its Althusserian
framework so as to incorporate, or relate to, other
non-modern research programs -such as the research
programs of relativity, uncertainty, indeterminacy,
and decentered multiplicity- whose discursive
contents seem to fit remarkably well into an
overdeterminist framework.
Kaynak:Ahmet Kara
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