Digressions&Impressions

7 February 1979: Foucault on Neo-Liberal Innovation (XIV)

The problem was: given a state that does not exist, if I can put it like that, and given the task of giving existence to a state, how can you legitimize this state in advance as it were? How can you make it acceptable on the basis of an economic freedom which will both ensure its limitation and enable it to exist at the same time? This was the problem, the question that I tried to outline last week and which constitutes, if you like, the historically and politically first objective of neo-liberalism. I would now like to try to examine the answer more closely. How can economic freedom be the state’s foundation and limitation at the same time, its guarantee and security? Clearly, this calls for the re-elaboration of some of the basic elements of liberal doctrine—not so much in the economic theory of liberalism as in liberalism as an art of government or, if you like, as a doctrine of government. (102)

Nothing proves that the market economy is intrinsically defective since everything attributed to it as a defect and as the effect of its defectiveness should really be attributed to the state. So, let’s do the opposite and demand even more from the market economy than was demanded from it in the eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century the market was called upon to say to the state: Beyond such and such a limit, regarding such and such a question, and starting at the borders of such and such a domain, you will no longer intervene. This is not enough, the ordoliberals say. Since it turns out that the state is the bearer of intrinsic defects, and there is no proof that the market economy has these defects, let’s ask the market economy itself to be the principle, not of the state’s limitation, but of its internal regulation from start to finish of its existence and action. In other words, instead of accepting a free market defined by the state and kept as it were under state supervision—which was, in a way, the initial formula of liberalism: let us establish a space of economic freedom and let us circumscribe it by a state that will supervise it—the ordoliberals say we should completely turn the formula around and adopt the free market as organizing and regulating principle of the state, from the start of its existence up to the last form of its interventions. In other words: a state under the supervision of the market rather than a market supervised by the state.--116

Just as for Husserl a formal structure is only given to intuition under certain conditions, in the same way competition as an essential economic logic will only appear and produce its effects under certain conditions which have to be carefully and artificially constructed. This means that pure competition is not a primitive given. It can only be the result of lengthy efforts and, in truth, pure competition is never attained. Pure competition must and can only be an objective, an objective thus presupposing an indefinitely active policy. Competition is therefore an historical objective of governmental art and not a natural given that must be respected. In this kind of analysis we find, of course, both the influence of Husserl and, in a somewhat Weberian way, the possibility of connecting up history with the economy. The ordoliberals go on to say that the task of economic theory is the analysis of competition as a formal mechanism and the identification of its optimum effects. But what actually takes place in the societies we know cannot be analyzed on the basis of this theory of competition. We can only analyze it by taking the real historical systems within which these formal economic processes function and are formed and conditioned. Consequently, we need an historical analysis of the systems that intersect, as it were, as a horizontal intersects a vertical, the formal analysis of economic processes. Economics analyzes the formal processes and history will analyze the systems in which the operation of these formal processes is either possible or impossible.

The third consequence they draw from this is that the relation between an economy of competition and a state can no longer be one of
the reciprocal delimitation of different domains. There will not be the  market game, which must be left free, and then the domain in which the state begins to intervene, since the market, or rather pure competition, which is the essence of the market, can only appear if it is produced, and if it is produced by an active governmentality. There will thus be a sort of complete superimposition of market mechanisms, indexed to competition, and governmental policy. Government must accompany the market economy from start to finish. The market economy does not take something away from government. Rather, it indicates, it constitutes the  general index in which one must place the rule for defining all governmental action. One must govern for the market, rather than because of the market. Michel Foucault, 7 February 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 5, The Birth of Biopolitics. 120-121

Foucault's fifth lecture is full of spectacular gems: a history of twentieth century German philosophy in the wake of Max Weber (who displaces Marx) with Freiburg and Frankfurt as two orbiting poles (and Heidegger as unspoken shadow, black hole) and so the joint history of philosophy and political economy; the indebtedness of Marcuse to Sombart; the political significance of the road to serfdom thesis, etc. Here I want to focus on one strain in the lecture (and which frames it and connects it to the other lectures): a key innovation in the liberal art of government by German neo-liberalism (or ORDOs). 

And this innovation is part of a natural history of liberalism that Foucault is telling. And, in fact, the German neo-liberals are a third or even fourth stage in this natural history. To simplify today, Foucault recognizes that there is a shift, schematically, from (i) the Lockean picture in which states promote growing populations and economies by focusing on non-zero-sum policies and are to become self-limiting to (ii) markets that must be left free (late nineteenth century laissez faire) to (iii) free markets most be constructed and policed by the state.* On (iii), Foucault had noted the week before (recall here; here), and repeats in lecture 5, that in virtue of preserving basic rights and generating economic goods, including the interests of the "weak and the poor," the ORDOs created a form of output legitimacy that could legitimate the state as such. 

Now, before I get to my main point, I want to note that much discussion inspired by Foucault takes up what we may call the Husserlian and neo-Kantian theme about the necessity to construct markets and market regulations under neoliberalism. And, the best critics of neoliberalism will, quite rightly, call attention to the amount of policing and violence needed to do such constructing. (I am thinking of Melinda Cooper on American family policy.) Unlike their American counterparts who love police and prisons, the German ORDOs prefer a juridical and regularized form of constructing (recall this post on Mestmäcker).** And I do not wish to downplay the significance problems with a purportedly emancipatory theory of freedom that (to echo Rousseau) forces, lethally forces, people to be free. But for the ORDOs much of the work that needs to be done has the character of antitrust law, preventing corporations from colluding and, not insignificantly thereby, lacking, freedom to lord over their employees. (The point of antitrust is not consumer welfare but a blockage against concentrated power.)

But the more important point Foucault makes, en passant, is that in the very critical acumen of the ORDO critique (of the Marxists, Keynesians, and Nazis) there is a paradox hiding in plain sight. I quote again, "it turns out that the state is the bearer of intrinsic defects, and there is no proof that the market economy has these defects, let’s ask the market economy itself to be the principle, not of the state’s limitation, but of its internal regulation from start to finish of its existence and action." Remember, this is part of neoliberal critique of the critics of liberalism. And, especially, if one is willing to grant this critique of the standard criticism of liberalism, one is stuck with the following problem: if the market economy becomes the principle of its own internal regulation, and the model for the state, the state is still required as a kind of formal and efficient cause to help construct the market (and be its independent umpire or 'supervisor'). 

Now, this is not a problem if market and state both approach the ideal limit. So, in optimal circumstances there is no paradox. But as Foucault notes, the ORDOs recognize that "what actually takes place in the societies we know cannot be analyzed on the basis of this theory of competition." Scientifically, this has the salutary effect of attempting to integrate political economy with history ("we can only analyze it by taking the real historical systems within which these formal economic processes function and are formed and conditioned.") The ORDOs can't help it that the Swedish nobel committee preferred a different conception of science. 

But politically, it puts neo-liberalism in a catch-22. The very state that needs to be modeled on the market, and, in turn, construct the market and govern for it, will be captured by many interests. And, while the ORDOs can smile wryly and wisely at their left-wing and youthful critics, who will treat 'true democracy' as a magic wand for any problem, it reinforces the cul-de-sac they are in. The state, whose legitimacy depends on proper functioning markets which protects basic rights, protects the vulnerable, and limits the accrual of power, must itself be modeled on the market, but which it can only shape and police properly, if it is in some sense already proper functioning, and so on.+ A regress looms once one recognizes that the government most constitute the free-market and, in turn, modeled on the market. But like a great entertainer ('good serial'), Foucault postpones discussion of this catch-22. 

 

 

On Foucault on Erhard, 31 January 1979: On Representation, Output Legitimacy, and Guaranteeing Freedom (XII)

Now, in April 1948, a Scientific Council formed alongside the German economic administration in what was called the Bi-Zone, that is to say, the Anglo-American zone, presented a report which laid down the following principle: “The Council is of the view that the function of the direction of the economic process should be assured as widely as possible by the price mechanism.” It turned out that this resolution or principle was accepted unanimously. And the Council voted by a simple majority for drawing the following consequence from this principle: We call for the immediate deregulation of prices in order [to bring prices in line with] world prices. So, broadly speaking, there is the principle of no price controls and the demand for immediate deregulation. We are in the realm of decisions, or of demands anyway, a realm of proposals that, in its elementary simplicity, calls to mind what the physiocrats called for or what Turgot decided in 1774. This took place on 18 April 1948. Ten days later, the 28th, at the meeting of the Council at Frankfurt, Ludwig Erhard—who was not in charge of the Scientific Council, for it had come together around him, but of the economic administration of the Anglo-American zone, or at any rate of the German part of the economic administration of the zone—gave a speech in which he took up the conclusions of this report. That is to say, he laid down the principle of no price controls and called for gradual deregulation, but he accompanied this principle, and the conclusion he drew from it, with a number of important considerations. He says: “We must free the economy from state controls.” “We must avoid,” he says, “both anarchy and the termite state,” because “only a state that establishes both the freedom and responsibility of the citizens can legitimately speak in the name of the people.” You can see that this economic liberalism, this principle of respect for the market economy that was formulated by the Scientific Council, is inscribed within something much more general, and this is a principle according to which interventions by the state should generally be limited. The borders and limits of state control should be precisely fixed and relations between individuals and the state determined. Ludwig Erhard’s speech clearly differentiates these liberal choices, which he was about to propose to the Frankfurt meeting, from some other economic experiments that managed to be undertaken at this time despite the dirigiste, interventionist, and Keynesian ambiance in Europe....What was at stake, and the text itself says this, was the legitimacy of the state.
   What does Ludwig Erhard mean when he says that we must free the economy from state controls while avoiding anarchy and the termite state, because “only a state that establishes both the freedom and responsibility of the citizens can legitimately speak in the name of the people”? Actually, it is fairly ambiguous, in the sense that I think it can and should be understood at two levels. On the one hand, at a trivial level, if you like, it is simply a matter of saying that a state which abuses its power in the economic realm, and more generally in the realm of political life, violates basic rights, impairs essential freedoms, and thereby forfeits its own rights. A state cannot exercise its power legitimately if it violates the freedom of individuals; it forfeits its rights. The text does not say that it forfeits all its rights. It does not say, for example, that it is stripped of its rights of sovereignty. It says that it forfeits its rights of representativity. That is to say, a state which violates the basic freedoms, the essential rights of citizens, is no longer representative of its citizens. We can see what the precise tactical objective of this kind of statement is in reality: it amounts to saying that the National Socialist state, which violated all these rights, was not, could not be seen retrospectively as not having exercised its sovereignty legitimately. That is to say, roughly, that the orders, laws, and regulations imposed on German citizens are not invalidated and, as a result, the Germans cannot be held responsible for what was done in the legislative or regulatory framework of Nazism. However, on the other hand, it was and is retrospectively stripped of its rights of representativity. That is to say, what it did cannot be considered as having been done in the name of the German people. The whole, extremely difficult problem of the legitimacy and legal status to be given to the measures taken [under] Nazism are present in this statement.
   But there is [also] a broader, more general, and at the same time more sophisticated meaning to Ludwig Erhard’s statement that only a state that recognizes economic freedom and thus makes way for the freedom and responsibility of individuals can speak in the name of the people. Basically, Erhard is saying that in the current state of affairs—that is to say, in 1948, before the German state had been reconstituted, before the two German states had been constituted—it is clearly not possible to lay claim to historical rights for a not yet reconstituted Germany and for a still to be reconstituted German state, when these rights are debarred by history itself. It is not possible to claim juridical legitimacy inasmuch as no apparatus, no consensus, and no collective will can manifest itself in a situation in which Germany is on the one hand divided, and on the other occupied. So, there are no historical rights, there is no juridical legitimacy, on which to found a new German state.
    But—and this is what Ludwig Erhard’s text says implicitly—let’s suppose an institutional framework whose nature or origin is not important: an institutional framework x. Let us suppose that the function of this institutional framework x is not, of course, to exercise sovereignty, since, precisely, there is nothing in the current situation that can found a juridical power of coercion, but is simply to guarantee freedom. So, its function is not to constrain, but simply to create a space of freedom, to guarantee a freedom, and precisely to guarantee it in the economic domain. Let us now suppose that in this institution x—whose function is not the sovereign exercise of the power to constrain, but simply to establish a space of freedom—any number of individuals freely agree to play this game of economic freedom guaranteed by the institutional framework. What will happen? What would be implied by the free exercise of this freedom by individuals who are not constrained to exercise it but who have simply been given the possibility of exercising it? Well, it would imply adherence to this framework; it would imply that consent has been given to any decision which may be taken to guarantee this economic freedom or to secure that which makes this economic freedom possible. In other words, the institution of economic freedom will have to function, or at any rate will be able to function as a siphon, as it were, as a point of attraction for the formation of a political sovereignty. Of course, I am adding to Ludwig Erhard’s apparently banal words a whole series of implicit meanings which will only take on their value and effect later. I am adding a whole historical weight that is not yet present, but I will try to explain how and why this meaning, which is at once theoretical, political, and programmatic, really was in the minds of those who wrote this discourse, if not in the mind of the one who actually delivered it. Michel Foucault, 31 January 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 4, The Birth of Biopolitics. 80-3

The long, extraordinary passage is introduced by Foucault as an example of "German neo-liberalism" which is the more "important" kind of contemporary liberal governmentality (79). The other kind is the American type. In the interest of space, I defer exploring why Foucault claims, although it is vital to understanding his intentions related to the fact that for him "he state is nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of
multiple governmentalities." (77)

The "elementary simplicity" that drove Turgot's decision-making led, via famine and state bankruptcy, to the French revolution. By contrast, Erhard's decisions led to the Wirtschaftswunder.Foucault strongly implies that the contrasting fortunes between otherwise similar policies can be explained not just in terms of contrasting historical and economic contexts, but also in terms of the (for lack of a better word) political conceptualizations that accompany them. 

Before I get to the content of Foucault's analysis, I note that he repeatedly treats Erhard's words as "apparently banal" (87).  It's also in the French. Now, 'banale' is a term Foucault throws around quite a bit in the lectures. So, I don't want to claim that the pairing with Arendt's Eichmann is deliberate. Even so I think the use of 'banale' is quite deliberate. For, Foucault is explicit that whatever Erhard's intentions, the significance of his words came later and are added by Foucault ("I am adding a whole historical weight that is not yet present"). Erhard is treated as a functionary, who is delivering words that echo the Ordo doctrines (and it is, despite the mention of the Austrian school just before in the lecture, quite clear to Foucault that the Freiburg Ordo theorists who "wrote" it). 

Foucault makes an uncharacteristic mistake both in setting himself above the historical agents he is characterizing and in treating Erhard as a mere instrument. Under Nazism, Erhard showed more independence of mind as can be readily ascertained by reading his (1943/4) War Finances and Debt Consolidation (Kriegsfinanzierung und Schuldenkonsolidierung), which dangerously anticipated German defeat and also sheds light on some of his commitments.

I mention this, in part, because when Erhard undertook his economic reforms he was almost certainly exceeding his legal authority to do so. And so we must recognize that the very effect he was trying to achieve, re-establish, perhaps establish for the first time, "juridical legitimacy" (82) in Germany, required an act of statecraft, of a gambling will, if one so wishes, that can only be legitimated in some sense by its effects. That is to say, this is no mere functionary, who merely repeats liberal piety of the past. As he puts it at the start of the 1948 speech Foucault quotes, "I am not preaching a return to the liberalist economic patterns of historic tradition." (27)

Okay, with that in place, let's turn to Foucault's interpretation. For Foucault Erhard claims that the state maintains its legitimacy and representative character when it guarantees the basic rights of its citizens. And, indeed, Foucault is surely right that in addition to rejecting marxist planning, and Keynesian interventionism, Nazism is the more fundamental target here. It is worth emphasizing, however, that Erhard also explicitly rejects "anarchy." This is a defense of the role of the state in guaranteeing basic rights. I don't think Foucault misses this, for he is clear that German liberalism presupposes such a state role.

The nature of representation that Foucault recognizes is in  a strange way one of output legitimacy. For, the legitimacy of the new German state will be ground in both the effective protection of rights. And, in virtue of such legitimacy the state can represent, speak and authorize on behalf of, its citizens. This is not the usual notion of representation, so Foucault is right to emphasize it.The 'consent' involved is extremely indirect.  We may say that only later, once basic rights are secured, did output legitimacy shift toward a focus one economic performance. 

This is not to deny that Erhard himself presents these basic "human rights" primarily in terms of freedom of choosing one's occupation and consumptions:

Any system which does not leave completely intact an individual's free choice of occupation and of consumption contravenes human rights and harms the very social classes for whose protection these spurious measures were conceived. Who, for example, would deny today that the present controlled economy- rejected though it may be by all concerned - has brought most suffering to the weak and the poor or that this class of the community entertains the profoundest hate of all for a system which has oppressed and humiliated them.  (28)

Crucially, and Foucault oddly misses this, Erhard relies on a kind of soft, proto-difference principle that the political order must, as a necessary condition, at least also promote the interests of the "weak and the poor." That is to say, the test of legitimacy, the gaining of the representative character, is really two-fold: it's both the protection of human rights (relatively narrowly understood) and the promotion of the interests even dignity of the "weak and the poor." And this concern, with a kind of bottom up fairness is very much on display in the earlier 1943/44 discussion, which is also framed in terms of the rough perceptions of fairness of those subject to economy policy. That is to say, more than actual fairness, what matters is the political acceptance of the vulnerable and least powerful. He captures this point in 1947 in terms of the "spirit of democracy." 

Now, I happen to think that this social economy (soziale Marktwirtschaft) brings Erhard (who was a Christian-Democrat) rather close to Smith, despite the distance to versions of late nineteenth century liberalism. I don't mean to deny that Erhard's position evades complex questions about how to measure and gouge such perceptions. What's crucial for my present purposes is that in virtue of missing this second feature, Foucault reduces the German form of governmentality to a defense and state construction of the market. And while I understand why for his larger narrative this might make sense, and that in this reductionist interpretation, Foucault echos the most misguided defenders of liberalism, it is important to see that the defense of the market is presented in a larger moral-political order that is worth revitalizing.

 

On Analytic Marxism's Displacement of Dialectics

In each sense of 'analytical', to be analytical is to be opposed to a form of thinking traditionally thought integral to Marxism: analytical thinking, in the broad sense of 'analytical', is opposed to so-called 'dialectical' thinking, and analytical thinking, in the narrow sense of 'analytical', is opposed to what might be called 'holistic' thinking. The fateful operation that created analytical Marxism was the rejection of the claim that Marxism possesses valuable intellectual methods of its own. Rejection of that claim enabled an appropriation of a rich mainstream methodology that Marxism, to!its detriment, had shunned....I said (see section 1 above) that analytical Marxists do not think that Marxism possesses a distinctive and valuable method. Others believe that it has such a method, which they call 'dialectical'. But we believe that, although the word 'dialectical' has not always been used without clear meaning, it has never been used with clear meaning to denote a method rival to the analytical one.[1] There is no such thing as a dialectical form of reasoning that can challenge analytical reasoning. Belief in dialectic as a rival to analysis thrives only in an atmosphere of unclear thought. G.A. Cohen "Introduction to the 2000 edition" (2000 [1978]) Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, xvii-xxiii.

Cohen takes non-trivial pride in having helped  found the method of analytic marxism (see p. xvii & xxiii).  This is explicitly opposed to, and intended to displace, what is known as dialectics. Dialectics is dismissed for being unclear . In the quoted passage, and later in the introduction, he suggests dialectics is only taken seriously in a context pervaded by unclarity such that resistance to analytic marxism (by those wedded to dialectic) exhibits "irrational obscurantism." (xxiv) Presumably, the footnote [1] is supposed to illustrate the lack of clarity. It reads,  "I do not think that the following, to take a recent example, describes such a method: 'This is precisely the first meaning we can give to the idea of dialectic: a logic or form of explanation specifically adapted to the determinant intervention of class struggle in the very fabric of history.' (Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx p. 97.) If you read a sentence like that quickly, it can sound pretty good. The remedy is to read it more slowly." (p. xxiii) 

As regular readers know, I am a bit allergic to the habit, cultivated by my analytic peers, to quote exemplary sentences (generally by continental philosophers) out of context, add some snark (here disguised as sincere advice), and say, see. Perhaps, Balibar's work on Marx is as shallow as Cohen suggests.  But the choice for Balibar (an academic best known by me for his work on Spinoza) is revealing because it is neither Marx nor an accomplished revolutionary practitioner of dialectics, say, Rosa Luxemburg, who calls the "dialectical materialist method of historical analysis" one of two "principles" of the "essence" of Marxism ("Foreword to the Anthology The Polish Question and the Socialist Movement.")

Let's stipulate that clarity is an important intellectual virtue even within Marxism. And if you are already socialized in a certain intellectual habitus, it is perfectly legitimate to take it for granted (even for polemical purposes). But, speaking strictly as a bourgeois intellectual, it is an odd choice for a Marxist to rest one's case on. Let me explain.

For Carnap, whose socialist commitments were not disguised, clarity is, in fact, a property or by-product of formal systems.* Carnapian clarity is really a second-order property of an otherwise esoteric, expert practice.  But if one is interested in revolutionary or even emancipatory politics,  it is not obvious that such clarity is the ruling virtue (as opposed to virtues that motivate action, or enable the proletariat to fulfill their revolutionary potential).  I don't mean to deny that for Carnap, presumably, anybody can be trained to become such an expert. And there is an attractive feature of communism -- emphasized, say, by Ernest Mandel in The Economic Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx 1843 to Capital -- that under communism everybody will be intellectually literate. But that's supposed to be the end-point of the revolution not the (prefigurative) means. 

Be that as it may, the introduction I quoted from is a later addition. In Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, Cohen does not (as far as I can tell) engage with the question at all.** I have been unable to find any place where Cohen does the intellectual work to show with some care what's wrong with dialectics. Throughout the book he cites his own (1974) "Marx's Dialectic of Labor;" this paper explicitly sets aside anything that non analytic Marxists might mean by dialectic and only focuses on "the descriptive residue" of the concept.

Earlier yet, in 1969, Cohen did a lovely review essay, worth re-reading for many reasons, "Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Marcuse," of Marcuse in New Left Review . This is a more general critique of (what Perry Anderson has called) Western Marxism to move from to "the aspirations of people" (and being a spokesman for them) to a focus on "culture" (and ideology). In this piece, Cohen suggests there is an authentic Marxist spirit from which Marcuse has deviated. An example of this more authentic Marxism (by Cohen's lights in 1969) is Karl Korsch.+ 

As it happens, Korsch is a lucid writer. And in his (1923) Marxism in Philosophy he offers a useful diagnosis of the motives of those who reject dialectics and a hint of what it might be:

Setting aside any philosophical considerations, it is therefore clear that without this coincidence of consciousness and reality, a critique of political economy could never have become the major component of a theory of social revolution. The converse follows. Those Marxist theoreticians for whom Marxism was no longer essentially a theory of social revolution could see no need for this dialectical conception of the coincidence of reality and consciousness: it was bound to appear to them as theoretically false and unscientific.-- [Emphases in original.] Translated by Fred Halliday.

In context, it is clear that the coincidence of consciousness and reality -- hereafter: the coincidence thesis -- is a constitutive feature of dialectics, but does not exhaust it. That consciousness and reality coincide is a position associated in different ways and with different political sensibilities with Platonism, Spinozism, and Hegel. It is easy to make fun of, but it is not unintelligible or, if you try working through it, nor obscure. (It is a bit tricky to learn to embrace the coincidence between epistemic and ontic perspectives if you have been taught this is a blunder.) Somewhat amusingly in Spinoza the epistemological and metaphysical achievement (recall this post on Tarski) of such coincidence is itself associated with full clarity. Korsch doesn't claim that Marxist dialectic is itself clear, but he thinks it is clear that the coincidence thesis is necessary for the way in which a critique of political economy could become a part of a theory of social revolution. And this, in turn, is a key feature to generate (the right sort of) revolution. 

Let me take stock. I have not here tried to articulate a full theory of dialectics. (That's for another time and perhaps not my role in life.) I have also not discussed the merits of analytic marxism. More narrowly, while Cohen is an early mover in analytic marxism, he is fairly late in the history of analytic philosophy. And so this makes one wonder if anybody in the analytic tradition did the serious work of showing by way of argument what's wrong with dialectics. This question is especially urgent because there are many indications that marxism is receiving renewed consideration within analytic philosophy or at least by our students.

To find such an attempt, we must look, I assume to Vienna (in the 1920s-30s) or New York (in the late 1930s), or perhaps Lodz (in the 1930s). As it happens, Cohen echoes in uncanny fashion -- the lesser,  lazy polemics*** of -- Ernest Nagel's treatment of dialectics; Nagel presents (recall) dialectics like the early moderns treat the terms of scholastic philosophy: as fundamentally unintelligible. And so, we seem to be stuck in an eternal return of name-calling. However, Nagel was intimately familiar with Sidney Hook's (1939) "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry," (published in JPhil) which presents itself as doing such thankless work, and, perhaps, the only such effort in the analytic tradition (now broadly conceived).++ I shall turn to it soon in order to establish whether Nagel's (and so by extension) Cohen's polemics rest on intellectual granite or quicksand.

 

 

On Vestal Virgins, Marxism and Final Causes (via Ernest Nagel, Huxley, and Bacon)

The third type of philosophy of science will require only brief exposition. It is professed, among others, by a number of scientists in this country and England, whose object is to show the social implications of theoretical research and thereby to rob modem theories of their air of mystery. They explain, frequently with admirable lucidity, the new sources of power opened up by science, the economies in human effort which it is capable of effecting, and the close interdependence of science and the technological arts. The dominant emphasis is thus placed upon scientific theories as engineers' "blue-prints for action," rather than as disclosures of some final reality.
There might be little to object to this approach to science if those who take it would not confuse their thesis by other claims: that scientific research ought always to be conducted with the social good in view, or that all significant research is in fact deter­mined by the organization and practical needs of society. There is, however, no evidence for the proposition that a warm social conscience is the best guide for the conduct of research; there is no ground for assuming that everyone knows what is socially desirable, that what is not of immediate social value will never prove to be so, or that devotion to socially valuable results neces­sarily contributes to the fullest development of systematic knowl­edge. There is overwhelming evidence to show that the content and direction of theoretical research is in the main controlled by technical problems internal to the sciences, and that changes in the social economy do not in general constitute the sufficient con­ditions for the specific content of theoretical inquiries.
A number of writers in this group make the further claim that the methods as well as the conclusions of science conform to the triad of "dialectical principles" sacred to many followers of Hegel and Marx. For example, Levy has argued that the occurrence of a distinct type of wave produced by a ship after it reaches a critical velocity illustrates the law of abrupt change of quality with sufficient increase of quantity; and Haldane has borne witness to the inestimable value of all three laws in his own biological researches. Space is lacking to examine these and other claims for the virtues of the dialectic laws. It must suffice to recall Einstein's remark that philosophers are fortunate indeed in beingg always able to establish the agreement of the latest findings of science with their own metaphysical principles. The principles of dialectic can be guaranteed never the fail, because their terms have no fixed content; they can be stretched to cover any facts whatsoever, after the facts have been independently established.
Were it not for the mysterious profundity claimed for them, and did they not serve to check inquiry by the glib finality with which they resolve all problems, the laws of dialectic could be left unreproached as a curious verbal game. As instruments for disentangling the web of theoretical constructions, however, they are as barren as the purest of vestal virgins.--Ernest Nagel (1941) "Recent Philosophies of Science," Kenyon Review (Vol 8), reprinted in Sovereign Reason (1954) 45-46.

I have quoted all of section 3, from a brief, critical "survey" of then prominent four philosophies of science by Ernest Nagel. Near the end of the paper, Nagel himself is forthright that he favors the fourth approach, which "does not aim at a compact system bt at painstaking analyses of the details of scientific procedure (46); but he associates it with names like "Mach, Poincare, Duhem, Campbell...Pierce....Russell, Wittgenstein, Tarkski...Carnap...James, Dewey, Cohen, Neurath, and Woodger;" (46) This approach frequently "goes under the somewhat unprecise and misleading of of "operationalism." (39) The two other approaches are associated with Whitehead (which gets a respectful critical treatment) and Eddington (which does not: his "philosophy of science consists of "outrageous puns."" (45)) 

The third type involves what we may call Marxist philosophy of science and Nagel's two exemplars are Haldane and Levy (surprisingly Bernal is not mentioned). I assume J.B.S. Haldane is somewhat familiar to readers of this blog. (And his work is due a rediscory given his interest in infectious diseases and pandemics.) I am pretty confident that most of my readers are less familiar with Levy. The index to Sovereign reason suggests this is a H. Levy. And with help of Google, I am pretty confident this is the author of (1938) A Philosophy for a Modern Man because it is also mentioned by Robert S. Cohen in "Marxism and Scientific Philosophy" a longer and more scholarly (and fascinating) review article in Metaphysical Review (1951).

The four features of Marxist philosophy of science that Nagel rejects are: (i) the normative claim that science ought to be guided by social aims; (ii) the empirical claim that it is always guided by social aims. In addition, (iii) the historicist thesis that science is determined by social economic context. And, finally, (iv) dialectical principles and its laws.

As an aside, (iii) was not just associated with Marxist philosophy of science. Institutional economists who were progressives (but not necessarily socialists or marxists) also accepted a version of (iii). As I have demonstrated, George Stigler, the Chicago economist, who was well read in philosophy of science (including Nagel) polemically rejects a version of (iii) in the 1950s-1960s; Stigler called it the “environmental theory" and he associated it with the historian of economics (and sociologist of knowledge) W. Stark and Wesley Mitchell, one of the leading institutionalists of the previous generation (who had died in 1948) and one of Milton Friedman’s mentors at NBER. 

Some other time I want to reflect a bit, from a sociological perspective, on the significance of the polemical rejection of dialectics by (would be) analytic philosophers, including those self-proclaimed analytic marxists more friendly to Marxism. Unlike his treatment of (i-iii), and his criticisms of the other approaches to philosophy of science, Nagel clearly does not think it is worth his effort to try to argue against dialectic and its laws. His only criticism that does not reduce to name calling ("no fixed content';" "mysterious profundity;" glib" etc.)* is that its practitioners engage in retrospectifve confirmation ("after the facts have been independently established"), which may be true but it is not a criticism of it qua philosophy of science. (As Nagel frankly admits it his own favored approach is not interested in "canons" of discovery. (47))

Here I want to close with an observation on Nagel's assertion that the laws of dialectic are as barren as the purest of vestal virgins. As it happens (friend of the blog, recall), David Haig discusses some of the history of this phrase in the history and philosophy of science in chapter 1 of his (2020) From Darwin to Derrida, a book I have had occasion to mention before. For, it is often the case that final causes are likened to barren virgins and, thereby, to be rejected. As Haig shows a version of the phrase goes back to Bacon's (1623) De Dignitate et augmentis Scientiarum, where Bacon is referring to the virgins consecrated to God (as vestal virgins were). Although it is likely, as Haig, suggests that the modern association of Bacon with the phrase "vestal virgins" is due to William Whewell, the founder of philosophy of science. (Whewell himself thought of final causes as constitutive and regulative to speculations.) It is with Huxley, while reviewing Darwin (1859), that the association of final causes as "barren virgins" to be left aside is put in place. (Haig and I both agree this was not exactly how Darwin thought about it.) 

We can assume that Nagel, who was widely read, was reasonably familiar with the association of the rejection of final causes as barren virgins since Huxley.[UPDATE: SEE FOOTNOTE]** Circumstantial evidence for the widespread familiarity of this point can be found in an essay in 1927 by C.D. Broad on "The Philosophy of Francis Bacon," where Broad warns his readers not to assume that in Bacon the phrase signals rejection of final causes. (I can't prove Nagel read this paper, but he was familiar with Broad's writings on the mind as a teleological system.) In the philosophy of biology, Nagel wrote quote a bit on teleological explanation. Much of it is naturally read as redescribing teleological concepts in terms of efficient causation or underlying laws. But near the end of his career he granted that "teleological concepts and teleological explanations" are not obscure (301) 

So, to sum up, Nagel treats the dialectics of those inspired by Hegel and Marx as fundamentally obscure. Writing in 1941, he thereby foreshadows the more common criticisms by analytic philosophers of folk who much later came to be known as continental philosophers.+ But the trope he activates to do so is one then commonly associated with the rejection of final causes.

But at no point were final causes thought obscure or unintelligible (even Spinoza did not go that far); rather from Huxley's polemics onward they were taken as local final causes to be thought unfruitful in scientific or experimental research. Because (recall) Huxley himself was an agnostic about fundamental matters, Huxley could acknowledge that general final causes were intelligible and perhaps appropriate in the domain of fundamental metaphysics. 

Nagel treats dialectics a bit like the early moderns treat the terms of scholastic philosophy: as fundamentally unintelligible. He simultaneously treats dialectics in the way Huxley treats local final causes: as intelligible albei unfruitful in (the philosophy of) science. But Nagel is so focused on his polemics that he forgets it can't be both.

 

 

 

On The Origin of Capitalism: Meiksins Wood, The Ordos, and Walter Lippmann on Productivity of Property

In fact, capitalism, in some ways more than any other social form, needs politically organized and legally defined stability, regularity, and predictability in its social arrangements. Yet these are conditions of capital's existence and self-reproduction that it cannot provide for itself and that its own inherently anarchic laws of motion constantly subvert. To stabilize its constitutive social relations - between capital and labour or capital and other capitals - capitalism is especially reliant on legally defined and politically authorized regularities. Business transactions at every level require consistency and reliable enforcement, in contractual relations, monetary standards, exchanges of property. The coercions that sustain these regularities must exist apart from capital's own powers of appropriation if it is to preserve its capacity for self-expansion. (178-179)

England's particular process of feudal centralization produced a legal and political order more unified than was the European norm. So...England had long had a unitary national parliament; ...England had a more nationally unified legal system, especially its 'common law' adjudicated by royal courts, which had become the preferred and dominant legal system very early in the development of the English state.....Instead, state formation took the form of a cooperative project, a kind of division of labour between political and economic power, between the monarchical state and the aristocratic ruling class, between a central political power that enjoyed a virtual monopoly of coercive force much earlier than others in Europe and an economic power based on private property in land more concentrated than elsewhere in Europe. (172)

Here, then, was the separation between the moment of coercion and the moment of appropriation, allocated between two distinct but complementary 'spheres', that uniquely characterizes capitalist exploitation. English landlords increasingly depended on purely 'economic' forms of exploitation, while the state maintained order and enforced the whole system of property. Instead of enhancing their own coercive powers to squeeze more out of peasants, landlords relied on the coercive power of the state to sustain the whole system of property, while they exercised their purely economic power, their concentrated landholdings, to increase the productivity of labour, in conditions where appropriators and producers were both becoming increasingly market-dependent. Ellen Meiksins Wood [1999/2017] The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer view,  172-3

Yesterday, I noted that according to Meiksins Wood and Adam Smith, the origin of agricultural capitalism can be found in a change in the character of land-leases (which became fixed-term, but lengthy) such that tenants and landlords submitted, mediated by the estimations of surveyors, to the discipline of the market-place which internalized a practice of unceasing improvement. As Smith noted this system was made possible, in part, by a change in legal practice in which the state provided legal remedies to  tenants.

This last point also fits a key strain in Meiksins Wood's argument: that agricultural capitalism is made possible by the state's capacity and willingness to maintain "order" and enforce "the whole system of property." In particular, on her view it also meant a willingness to give preference to a notion of property right that itself both encouraged improvement and, in part, is ground in or justified by such improvement. While she claims the account of property precedes Locke, she treats Locke (and by ignoring Grotius) as its greatest spokesman of a view she calls the "productivity of property" (111).

While her view skips the intrinsic defense of property rights (beloved by libertarians), that is, what Locke has to say about natural rights, I am not unsympathetic (recall) to her more instrumentalist and consequentialist reading of Locke's account of property (as an interpretation of Locke). This latter, more instrumentalist account is also (recall) visible in Toland's argument for Jewish naturalization and emancipation. Meiksins Wood is not inclined to see the productivity of property approach as emancipatory. Rather, she sees it rooted in the original sin of enclosure and the violation even "extinction of the customary rights of English commoners" (159) on which "many people depended for their livelihood" (108). 

My  interest today is not to debate the merits of the charge. Rather, I assume the 'productivity of property' is a doctrine that has entered and become entrenched in aspects of legal practice and statecraft; we see it, for example, in the practice of eminent domain (even though Locke has historically been associated with the natural law inspired criticism of eminent domain). This 'productivity of property' two important characteristics the first familiar, the second less so to liberal thought. First, as Meiksins Wood notes, the productivity of property presupposes independent state capacity to create a stable system of property rights that can shape expectations. And she is right to note that capitalism itself may create the institutional conditions -- rent-seeking, state capture, etc. -- that also create the incentives under which the impartial rule of law is undermined. One need not be a marxist to recognize she is onto something; the past two sentences describe the central obsession of the Ordoliberals (ORDOS), who worried that without both independent judiciary and independent civil service with esprit des corps, democracy provided a fast-track to the mechanisms by which the productivity of property was undermined. 

This is all familiar enough. But there is also a second feature, which she notes in the following paragraph:

We need to be reminded that the definition of property was in Locke's day not just a philosophical issue but a very immediate practical one. As we have seen, a new, capitalist definition of property was in the process of establishing itself, challenging traditional forms not just in theory but also in practice. The idea of overlapping use rights to the same piece of land was giving way in England to exclusive ownership. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, there were constant disputes over common and customary rights. Increasingly, the principle of improvement for profitable exchange was taking precedence over other principles and other claims to property, whether those claims were based on custom or on some fundamental right of subsistence. Enhancing productivity itself became a reason for excluding other rights. (114-115)

Now, Meiksins Wood's rhetorical point is to give a reader a sense of the unfairness or suffering that accompanies the exclusion of other rights. But lurking in it is the seminal point that to embrace the 'productivity of property' also means embracing unseizing conflict over property rights. That is, it is not just accepting the friction that accompanies a change in legal regime (from, say, common and customary rights to the productivity of property). But once the productivity of property is hegemonic even more legal friction is to be expected.*

To the best of my knowledge, writing in the midst of the Great Depressions (1937), Walter Lippmann (no Marxist) was the first to really grasp this point (although surely elements of it are in Marx); entrenched technological change would help drive open ended possible improvements in productivity, and, thus, constant relative changes in productivity of different factors of and property in production, but technological change would also drive a constant reconceptualization of what counts as property (and commodity), as witnessed by recent debates inspired by changes in artificial intelligence, financial innovation, and the status of genetic code of (say) plants and animals.

The elements of the second features give rise to the need for what (echoing Lippmann) one might call the 'spirit of adaptation' in government and law. The legal and political system can't merely stand back, but must "adapt itself successfully to the intensely dynamic character of the new technology.” (Lippmann's The Great Society: 16) Drawing in part on Adam Smith, Lippmann notes that this dynamic character of technology and property involves showing “how law and public policy may best be adapted to this mode of production which specializes men's work, and thereby establishes an increasingly elaborate interdependence among individuals and their communities throughout the world.” (174)

That is to say, Meiksins Wood is right that the productivity of property generates innumerable sites and constantly new forms of legal conflict. The rise of capitalism puts great, perhaps too great, demands on state capacity. It must provide a legal and tax framework that can generate reliable expectations, and simultaneously the governing elites must be willing, despite great temptations to profit from or steer it to partial ends, to adapt that framework in light of the friction generated by the practices shaped by it in open ended fashion. And it must do so while pursuing other political goals (connected to defense, public health, public goods, etc.)

Meiksins Wood closes her book with the observation that "as capitalism spreads more widely and penetrates more deeply into every aspect of social life and the natural environment, its contradictions are increasingly escaping all our efforts to control them." (198)  As should be clear, I agree that the contradictions are real; they are features not bugs. This suggests, in fact, that the marxists are right in thinking that political and economic crises are intrinsic to capitalism, despite their shape and content being often wholly new or genuinely uncertain. Writing in the pandemic, with living memory of the financial meltdown of 2007-9, this fits the lived experience of adult life under capitalism. But despite repeated and entirely justified collapses of confidence in the liberal project (broadly defined), it has also shown enormous resilience under adversity. And this resilience is also ground in lived experience. What's needed is a firmer grasp and critical evaluation of the spirit of adaptation that is itself shaped by the forces unleashed by the productivity of property, and that shapes these in turn. 

On the Origin of Capitalism; On Ellen Meiksins Wood, and Adam Smith

it was unfixed, variable rents responsive to market imperatives that in England stimulated the development of commodity production, the improvement of productivity, and self-sustaining economic development. In France, precisely because peasants typically enjoyed possession of land at fixed and nominal rents, no such stimulus existed. It was, in other words, not the opportunities afforded by the market but rather its imperatives that drove petty commodity producers to accumulate....The same process created a highly productive agriculture capable of sustaining a large population not engaged in agricultural production, but also an increasing propertyless mass that would constitute both a large wage-labour force and a domestic market for cheap consumer goods - a type of market with no historical precedent. This is the background to the formation of English industrial capitalism.--Ellen Meiksins Wood (1999 [2017] The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer view, 102-103

Meiksins Wood  (whose book I warmly recommend) relies on a distinction between commerce and capitalism. Commerce is historically ubiquitous; whereas capitalism originated once,  relatively recently in human history (in the English countryside). The former is characterized by voluntary exchanges in which people buy low and sell dear and occurs primarily in (what we may call) arbitrage opportunities. While societies in which commerce exists are durable, their growth potential is limited. The latter occurs from necessity, that is survival, in which in order to survive people engage in ever cheaper and more efficient production of their factor. Growth in capitalism is, in principle, open-ended bounded at some limit by Earth's resources (and internal instability). Crucially, in a capitalist system everybody, or all factors, experiences structural domination by the market: "compulsion lies at the heart of the new economic dynamic." (138)

Meiksins Wood explores the question of the origin of capitalism in order to (use her terminology) denaturalize it (cf. p. 74). In particular, she attacks the idea, which she repeatedly associates with Adam Smith and the phrase associated with him, 'truck, barter, and exchange' (11, 21, 28 75, 193), that there is an "economic man" whose shackles (e.g., feudalism, slavery, trade-protection, etc.) simply need to be undone in order for capitalism to emerge naturally. The idea behind this thought can be found in a famous passage in the Wealth of Nations (hereafter WN): "all systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord."

For Meiksins Wood, capitalism emerges, as it happens (but this is less important) under a certain version of feudalism, in which, and this is important, term-limit leases are introduced in agriculture and the price of these leases are determined by an estimation by surveyors of the value of that land after improvement (a key word) in light of prevailing, or at the least the abstract perception of prevailing, market conditions. I quote two representative passages: "As for the tenants, they were increasingly subject not only to direct pressures from landlords but also to market imperatives that compelled them to enhance their productivity." (100) And "We can watch the development of a new mentality by observing the landlord's surveyor as he computes the rental value of land on the basis of some more or less abstract principle of market value, and measures it explicitly against the actual rents being paid by customary tenants."  (101) These new kind of leases create the "rupture" (8) that generates the "laws of motion" associated with capitalism "that uniquely compel people to enter the market, to reinvest surpluses and to produce 'efficiently' by improving labour productivity - the laws of competition, profit maximization, and capital accumulation." (16) 

Some other time, perhaps, I'd like to discuss her fascinating treatment of Thomas More and, especially, Locke. And the role of the state in facilitating the growth of capitalism. For now I want to note that one need not be Marxist to appreciate her effort. Determining the historical origin and naire of capitalism is fascinating  and undoubtedly sheds some light on the possibilities, if any, of articulating alternatives or changes to it. This is so, even if one were to reject the commerce vs capitalism distinction. So, for example, if one has a liberal mindset, the relevant distinction is within capitalism: one between mercantilism and commerce (or liberalism). And the liberal is willing to grant that mercantilism is historically prior (albeit not, perhaps, conceptually). 

Above, I suggested that it is not unfair (to Meiksins Wood and Smith) to see Adam Smith as the proper target of Meiksins Wood's analysis. Even so, while reading her book I had the recurring thought that Smith had anticipated her in a key respect. This is not strange because as many authors have noted that despite the pin factory example, Smith seems almost ignorant of the industrial revolution (if he notices it at all), and focuses quite a bit of attention on land rents. For, in fact, Smith calls attention to the very leases singled out by Meiksins Wood, and he concludes his discussion of them: "Those laws and customs so favourable to the yeomanry, have perhaps contributed more to the present grandeur of England than all their boasted regulations of commerce taken together." (Wealth of Nations, 3.2.14, p. 392)

The three features Smith singles out are [i] "When such farmers have a lease for a term of years, they may sometimes find it for their interest to  lay out part of their capital in the further improvement of the farm; because they may sometimes expect to recover it, with a large profit, before the expiration of the lease." & [ii] since the time of Henry VII, the protection of the tenants'  value in improved land by "the action of ejectment" which allowed legal remedy of recovery against premature. (WN 392; in the next paragraph, Smith  notes that some such law was introduced in Scotland already in 1449) 

Before I get to the third feature, I want to stress this is not a side comment, in Smith's analysis. I offer two kinds of evidence. First, when Smith formally analyzes 'rents of land' in (WN 1.11) he describes variable, fixed-term leases of agricultural capitalism described by Meiksins Woods as the exemplary kind: landlords "In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him [the tennant] no greater share of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up the stock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more." (WN 1.11.1, 160). Throughout the chapter, Smith makes clear that these leases drive productivity and that they represent a conflictual model (and, but I explore this some other time, in some ways even violate our sense of fairness and justice).

Second, Smith praises the Physiocrats (or "Oecenemists"), when in their plans to eliminate French famine and to have French agriculture catch up with English standards, they emulate British practices:  "it has been in consequence of their representations, accordingly, that the agriculture of France has been delivered from several of the oppressions which it  before laboured under. The term during which such a lease can be granted, as will be valid against every future purchaser or proprietor of the land, has been prolonged from nine to twenty-seven years. The antient provincial restraints upon the transportation of corn from one province of the kingdom to another, have been entirely taken away, and the liberty of exporting it to all foreign countries, has been established as the common law of the kingdom in all ordinary cases. (WN 4.9.38, 678);

So, Smith both knows that the paradigmatic cases of rent, which are crucial to the analytic core of his system, are themselves historically conditioned by institutional factors and not eternal pre-existing forms of exchange.* And it is this paradigmatic case that drives commercial development as he sees it. So, why has this not been emphasized (even missed by friends and critics of Smith). This gets me to the third point.

In explaining the downfall of feudalism and monastic estates, Smith emphasizes [iii] that foreign commerce developed vain, new tastes in landlords, who, in order, to increase revenue from their holdings set in motion the kinds of leases which form the backbone of what Meiksins Wood calls agricultural capitalism.  In fact, scholars love to quote the passage, which emphasizes the political effects, of the rise of agricultural capitalism:

The expensive vanity of the landlord made him willing to accept of this condition; and hence the origin of long leases...The tenants having in this manner become independent, and the retainers being dismissed, the great proprietors were no longer capable of interrupting the regular execution of justice, or of disturbing the peace of the country. Having sold their birth-right, not like Esau for a mess of pottage in time of hunger and necessity, but in the wantonness of plenty, for trinkets and baubles, fitter to be the play-things of children than the serious pursuits of men, they became as insignificant as any substantial burgher or tradesman in a city. A regular government was established in the country as well as in the city, nobody having sufficient power to disturb its operations in the one, any more than in the other. (WN 3.4.13-15, p. 421; elsewhere Smith makes the same claim about the demise of feudal, monastic landholding: "But this increase of rent could be got only by granting leases to their tenants, who thereby became in a great measure independent of them.")

Scholars and critics have loved to focus on the moral psychology and providential morality tale, even theodicy, immanent in [iii], which Smith himself attributes to Hume. But there is no doubt that Smith has the very same explanation [i-iii] of the origin of commerce as a social stage in the four stages of development as Meiksins Wood. (Well not entirely the same because she downplays the significance of the existence of foreign trade.) It is in what she calls the slow development of agricultural capitalism made possible by a certain kind of variable but secure lease that Smith sees the great source of England's wealth. These leases represent  the (improving) reproductive potential of the tenant and the discipline of the market-place. 

So, while I think it is correct to say that Smith also propagated the rhetorical seeds of the naturalized version of the origin of capitalism, he is crystal clear about the origin and significance of agricultural capitalism. None of the above is meant to deny that Meiksins Wood and Smith offer different interpretations of the wider moral significance of agricultural capitalism (Smith thinks it generates a new kind of interdependent independence; Meiksins Wood a new kind of structural domination), but about these matters some other time more.

 

On Historical Experience, Legitimacy, Conventions and the Spirit of Experimentation in Locke

Sect. 50. But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.--John Locke Second Treatise of Government

The quoted passage is at the end of chapter 5 "Of Property" of Locke's Second Treatise. Much of the philosophical interest is in the earlier articulation of the principle known as the 'Lockean proviso' (in, recall, section  33) and the labor mixing argument grounded in self-ownership (sect 27). On re-reading the chapter recently (with expert guidance of Bas van der Vossen and Katharine Gillespie), I noticed, perhaps for the first time, that the very chapter that justifies property is also a polemic against (feudal) land-owning society (in favor of an economy focused on growing  numbers and economy). 

Earlier in the chapter, Locke had noted that "the invention of money, and the tacit agreement of men to put a value on it, introduced (by consent) larger possessions." (Sect 36). There are five important claims lurking here. I) (the right to) property precedes the invention of money. II) The invention of money facilitates accumulation of property (and of itself; see also sects 48 & 50 quoted above). (III) This generates inequality (this is made explicit in sect 50 quoted above). IV) The value of money is a convention. V) This convention is tacitly consented to. 

As an aside, according to Locke the conventional use of money can in a growing economy itself make other things scarce and so valuable, "(where the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce, and so of some value)" (sect 45). There is a complex issue lurking here: in Locke, unlike Hume and later economists, scarcity is itself not a condition of the possibility of property. But that's for another time. 

Now, interestingly enough, that the use of money is consented to is a refrain repeated through the chapter: e.g., "amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the use of money," (sect 45); "thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life," (sect 47). And again in the passage quoted above.

So, one may be tempted to think that Locke's account of the legitimacy of money as an institution is grounded in a consent theory not dissimilar to his account of the social contract. But I am also reminded of his account of toleration, where (recall) the institution of (true) a church is grounded in voluntary association, that is, mutual consent ("A church...I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord"). But it is crucial to Locke argument in his analysis of the nature of a church that it produces a positive social consequence: piety, that is, obedience to the law. This positive consequence is conducive to social order and, to connect it to the present argument, respect for property.

Let's now, finally,  turn sect 50 quoted above. First, it clarifies that (IV) "the value of money is a convention" is imprecisely formulated. It would be better to say, (IV*) that money is valuable is a convention. For, the exact value of money can vary. And (VI) of  this particular value labor is the measure. How Locke's version of the labor theory of value is supposed to work is not my present concern.

Second, and more important, Locke's account of the legitimacy of the convention of money as a social institution is not just  grounded in  (tacit) consent. It is also grounded in what we may call historical experience over time. They have learned to appreciate ("found out") the social utility ("made practicable") of the convention despite some of its equally evident drawbacks -- that is, others become richer than you do. That is to say, social utility is a matter of judgment about social costs and benefits. This two-staged for of legitimation (first) tacit consent then, after a period, (second) continued consent based on historical experience of positive social consequences. 

This two-stage approach to legitimacy is, I think, capable of being extended to, appropriate for other social institutions (and conventions) in a Lockean approach. As noted above, he comes close to offering it in his account of toleration of certain churches. Obviously, it means that initial legitimacy of a social institution is always conditional on the continued proper effectiveness of the institution over historical time. This analysis of costs and benefits may well involve comparing incommensurables and so will involve good judgment, and it is not impossible that different communities and ages will come to different conclusions.  For some the lack of a clear and objective decision procedure will be thought a problem for Locke; for others, this (almost Aristotelian) contextual variability will be thought a proper feature.

To put the last point provocatively: the Lockean can now respond to (say) the Marxist or Environmentalist critique of (one element of) capital accumulation as follows in the spirit of adaptation/experimentation: sure, the institutions of the status quo have serious drawbacks (as all institutions are wont to do). Why not propose, or better yet, with your comrades, try out an alternative institution or set of institution that can generate consent from its participants and that generates good social outcomes over time worth living by? 

What's striking about all this is that in one sense Locke comes closer to Spinoza for whom all social contracts are never final but always dependant on continued utility of the contract to the parties; and in another sense he now clearly anticipates the more consequentialist style of justification of social institutions found in Hume and Adam Smith, while still remaining distinctly (ahh) Lockean. 

On Karl and/or Michael Polanyi on the Rise of Fascism.

Totalitarianism, hostile to all dynamic systems, attacks their standards and ideals. In the totalitarian view those who pursue ideals are neglecting their duty to society, for the sake of unsubstantial values of purely formal significance. The...[denial of] the justification of pure science, is a case in point. We will come back to it later in detail.

Another aspect of the same conflict arises from the democratic nature of the dynamic systems. Their growth takes place through the life and action of the community of specialists in charge. It is a democratic life conducted publicly, under the voluntarily accepted laws of this circle. We have seen how every new addition to the social heritage is suggested in public, discussed and codified, or rejected in public under the guidance of the "influentials" acting as elected officers. At the same time the specialist circles keep up popular contacts all around them. They appeal to a wider range of lay connoisseurs or specially interested members of the general public, and through these they recommend themselves to the common man throughout the entire community. Thus they establish the standing of their particular pursuits in the life of society as a whole. The inner circle of creative men becomes entrusted by the whole of society with the cultivation of certain ideals, in which the rest of the people take part at various stages of interest. We have here a system of indirect representation, at each stage of which people less experienced and interested in a particular field confide in others, more intimately concerned with it.

The expansion of modern public life during the 19th century, which has continued rapidly during the past two decades through the advent of the wireless and film, had made this informal mode of self- government, by direct response of the public to the activities of various specialised strata, a most important element of democracy. It has recently become a factor in politics, where it seems to be side-tracking to some extent the electoral machine. In the United States in particular, the division between the Legislative and the Executive has invited the development of this type of direct public influence-- exercised through the press and the results of private polls which sway in major issues the views. of the professional politicians-the electoral machinery retaining of course its function as the ultimate sanction of public opinion.

The existence of this modern form of democracy, upheld by the circles of dynamic systems and the general public connected with them, makes it necessary for modern dictators to become totalitarian. No absolute ruler can be satisfied to-day with dominion life alone. That realm in itself is shadowy and for example by the regime of South American can become real to-day only by eradicating the cultural life with all its widespread popular roots. prestige of the guardians of intellectual and moral their autonomous circles are dispersed, and the wider thereby to a helpless mass, can the dictator address without fear of control or criticism.'--Michal Polanyi (1941) "The Growth of Thought in Society, Economica, 442-3

Last week, I noted that in the Great Transformation (1944), Karl Polanyi argues that markets are inherently fragile and proper functioning markets are very disruptive of traditional forms of life and destroy previously existing organic culture. This generates reactions that have the (possibly conflicting) aims to shore up and protect the market and protect society to slow down the rate of social change. In some some cases these reactions work in the same direction and thereby strengthening forces that threaten to overwhelm liberal society. Thus, "Fascism, like socialism, was rooted in a market society that refused to function."  Because nineteenth century liberal society was global, for Polanyi the fascist reaction to the implosion of market society is a world-wide phenomenon. Given the clear rise of fascist tendencies around the world, Polanyi's thought has returned to salience.*

One arresting feature of  Karl Polanyi's account is his treatment of the capitulation of democratic forces against rather weak fascist action. And while he sometimes -- in a minor key -- suggests this was due to a kind of cynical miscalculation (from craven self-interest) by conservative business-friendly interests, his account implies -- in the major key -- the shocking result is due to a lack of faith among democratic elites. Why this is so, he does not quite explain.+ So, while Polanyi is strong on describing the triggering conditions when liberal societies are vulnerable to implosion, he does not explain the mechanism. Somewhat surprisingly, the thought of another Polanyi can be helpful here.  

Karl Polanyi's younger brother, Michael, had more liberal political tendencies than Karl. Unlike Karl -- who has a narrow identification of liberalism with free markets in people and land, and a fixed exchange rates (i.e., the gold standard) --, Michael Polanyi emphasizes the rise of specialized, partially self-governing intermediary societies (within science, art, law, the crafts, engineering, medicine, etc.) as constitutive of liberal society. In these intermediary societies, professionals get to exercise independent judgment that, regardless the diversity of underlying private motives, indirectly serve the common good (over time). These self-governing intermediary societies have a complex inward-looking dynamic and a complex outward-looking dynamic partially mediated by what Polanyi calls "influentials." (In my own work (recall) I call these "aggregators".)

The evolving views that are characteristic of development of these intermediary societies are fundamentally influenced by discussion about evidence and ideals.) And, while Michael Polanyi, does not use the phrase, it's clear he thinks these intermediary societies are democratic in virtue of the fact that they instantiate the ideal of 'government by discussion' not force, among (relative) equals. As it happens, one of the more important intermediary societies is political in character at the interface of professional politicians and opinion makers and the expert-influentials that advise them. (Here Polanyi seems to echo (recall) Lippmann, who he does not quote.)

Michael Polanyi thinks that the attack, characteristic of fascist thought, on elites is really an attack on the significance of these 'influentials' and the independent power(s), including prestige, these represents. (He thinks this, partially, reflects the legacy of aristocratic disdain of science.) I find this helpful in understanding why anti-liberal political movements ranging from populists to fascists and marxists, never let up in attacking many of the intermediary societies, but especially law and the academy, as long as they are independent. The whole point is to make these intermediaries feel isolated so that when the inevitable power grab comes, the ruling strata of these intermediaries lack the faith and confidence to stand for their independence. It's an insight that today's fascists have grasped.

On Perry Anderson; writing on the Politics of Austerity, discursive power, Greece and the EURO

It was no accident that the first tremors of the earthquake to come originated not in the us but in the eu, with the crisis of bnp Paribas and collapse of Northern Rock in August–September 2007. Entanglement with America to the west; predation in Europe itself to the east, where Tooze shows the extent of the financial appropriation of local assets in the former Communist countries by Dutch, Austrian and Scandinavian capital. Nor, of course, has he anything but scorn for the role of the ecb and the turn to austerity once the crisis broke.
There, in one of the many gripping set-pieces of the book, Tooze delivers a damning verdict on the treatment of Greece by the Commission, the ecb and the imf, and subsequently the European Council, which presided over its fate from 2010 onwards. The crushing of Syriza’s attempt to negotiate less draconian terms for its society and economy is not only vividly portrayed, but set in the wider context of the thwarting of governments of the left in these years by the external imposition of ‘political and financial discipline’ on them. No one could doubt on which side Tooze’s sympathies lie in this exercise of brute power. But just where did this discipline come from, and how far did it extend? At this crux, his account takes leave of absence. At its centre lies the nature of the European Union, and the position of Germany within it. Evasive on the first and inconsistent on the second, Crashed offers no coherent account of the relationship between them, for it is too protective of each.
Decisive in this regard is the book’s abstraction of the decisions taken by policy-makers from the structures in which they were working. What was the matrix of the monetary union created at Maastricht?--Perry Anderson (2019) "Situationism a la Envers," in New Left Review (119), p. 80.

Prompted, apparently, by a review (by Cedric Durand) of Tooze's Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World, Perry Anderson's widely circulated essay, which ranges widely over Tooze's oeuvre and twentieth century politics, is a stinging rebuke of the "complacency" and brutality of "left liberalism" (a term also used by Tooze to describe himself) or "centrist liberalism" (a term used by Anderson (85)). My interest here is not in defending left liberalism; much of Anderson's (and Tooze's) criticism of it is spot on.

Rather, my interest is in the claim that "governments of the left" within the EU have been thwarted by "external imposition of 'political and financial discipline' on them" by the EU. This claim fits two larger trends of broadly left-wing intellectual British writing about the EU, which has two functions: (i) to combat the politics of austerity in the UK; (ii) to undermine the legitimacy (and its anti-democratic technocracy) of the EU. (Since the Brexit vote not all left-sympathetic intellectuals embrace (ii), of course.) For all their merits, such writings tend to present intra EU debates in ways that fail to do justice to the political agency of the participants in them. 

First, it is undeniable that the EU creates obstacles to certain forms of "governments of the left," especially those that are in the Eurozone. The most important of these are rules against government control of the economy and attempts to pursue industrial policy that end up favoring local producers. That is to say, left-wing governments that would pursue nationalist agendas are indeed severely handicapped by the EU. But redistributionist left-wing governments are, if they are willing and capable of taxing the local rich, not so-handicapped. Yes, the rich have ways of hiding some of their money, but it's not EU rules that prevent member states from finding and taxing it; rather there is a lack of political will. And the lack of political will is a function of the lack of local political power. The absence of political power makes the reliance on debt so tantalizing. But debt-financing is not itself characteristic of governments of the left. (As the next paragraph illustrates.)

Second, it is undeniable that the EU has thwarted the democratic will of some of the citizens of its member states during the crisis. But this is not directed at governments of the left. This becomes transparent if we reflect on the following passage (partially quoting Tooze): "when Papandreou and Berlusconi were ousted as premiers of Greece and Italy in 2011, senior officials in Berlin could be heard boasting: ‘We do regime change better than the Americans’; and to admit that the Fiscal Compact of 2013 was a straightforward imposition of the German ‘debt brake’ on the rest of the Eurozone." (81) Whatever else one may wish to say about Berlusconi, his is in no sense a government of the left.

As an aside, it is notable that Portugal goes unmentioned. In 2015 an anti-austerity would-be-left-wing government was thwarted (briefly). But it was not the EU who did so, but the country's president. Eventually constitutional processes prevailed, and Portugal has had a left-wing government since.

Third, and let me now turn to the heart of the matter: Greece. It is worth mentioning that Syriza was never crushed. After it became the main opposition party, in May 2012, it became the governing party in 2015. It called a snap-election after its defeat in EU elections, and was defeated (in Summer of 2019). But it is now the regular opposition. And if Greek politics has stabilized (that is by no means certain) it can expect to govern again.

It is, of course, true that Syriza failed to undo much of the austerity that was imposed on Greece by the Troika prior to its ascension to power. I have  been quite critical of the EU's policies toward Greece in the midst of the crisis (see for example here in Dutch). These policies were manifestly designed to protect well connected (German, Dutch, and French) bankers and not Greek citizens. But English language critics of Greek austerity tend to ignore four pertinent facts: (1) the annual budget deficit of Greece was, when the crisis started, around 15% of GDP. It remained above 10% for the next few years. While one can argue about the size and speed of budget cuts and the distributional effects of these, austerity in Greece has very different character from the voluntary austerity pursued by, say, Tory/Lib Dem and Tory governments in the UK. Austerity in Greece was real, but claims about it also tend to be exaggerated. Its "size relative to GDP of [was] 4.0% in 2010, 3.1% in 2011, 2.8% in 2012 and 0.8% in 2013."+ In particular, in contrast to the UK, the Greek state lacks the capacity to raise income; this was, in fact, exhibited in the boom period prior to the crisis. 

In addition (2), there was widespread distrust of the Greek ruling elites in the rest of Europe thanks to the decades long fraud by successive Greek governments, statisticians, etc. It is pretty clear that non-Greek banks and officials were (sometimes actively) complicit (and profited) from this. While I think more should have been done to hold those responsible (inside and outside Greece) accountable, and to show more public good-will toward Syriza, politically (1) and (2) made it impossible for any EU politician to advocate for massive transfers from Northern taxpayers to Greek citizens. If Anderson  (recall also this post) cared to advance a reform of the EU, he would argue that some such structural transfers are necessary inside the Eurozone. Of course, he is not interested in doing so.**

Also, (3) a majority of Greek citizens apparently prefer staying inside the Euro.* And when given the option to leave the Euro on favorable terms and staying in, they seem to wish to stay in even if it means austerity. This is by no means irrational because inside the Euro, the purchasing power of Greek citizens is better preserved (at the cost of high unemployment and low growth). Even accounts (correctly) highly critical of German and Dutch politicians, acknowledge that the German government was willing to spend serious money to facilitate a Greek exit from the Euro.

One never hears the intelligentsia critics of austerity talk about (1-3). This is remarkable because such intellectuals use their discursive power to deny Greek political agency (within the constraints that they face). This is also evident in Cedric Durand's review of Tooze: 

Tooze rightly stresses, from the very start it was never a question of economic necessity. The ecb could have bought Greek bonds in 2010 and stabilized the crisis very rapidly, but chose not to because it ‘meant to send a message: austerity or else!’ By using Greece as their exemplum, he argues, ‘right-wing fearmongers, conservative political entrepreneurs and centrist fiscal hawks shifted the political balance’ in the Eurozone. This was the moment when a crisis with its origins in the private financial sector was rebranded as a problem of fiscal and welfare profligacy.

Even if one were to grant that the financial crisis as a whole has its origins (not at least partially in misguided government regulations and policies but) wholly in the private financial sector (and ignore the enormous investment of subprime loans by European, regional state owned banks, etc.), this is manifestly not the case of the Greek crisis (which has a relatively small financial sector).++ In addition, and again this is often ignored by the English speaking intelligentsia writing for each other, the Euro crisis is really caused by the mercantile policies of Germany and the Netherlands.

That is to say, Anderson is right to claim (in his criticism of Tooze) that "The single currency is the ark of a covenant that is not to be questioned." (83) I think there is no doubt that at the height of (the ongoing!) crisis, no government leader wanted to be responsible for the break-up of the Euro on their watch. But the reason for this is pretty clear: (4) there is no evidence to think that ordinary citizens in even the countries that suffer most during the financial crisis wanted to leave the Euro.*** (This, of course, does not play well to British audiences, and is discomfiting to Lexiters, and so one never hears about it.) But if one wants to understand "decisions taken by policy-makers from the structures in which they were working." this is non-trivial omission.  

 

 

Utopia, Marx, Colonialism, and the Lockean Proviso

“As their cities are composed of families, so their families are made up of those that are nearly related to one another.  Their women, when they grow up, are married out, but all the males, both children and grand-children, live still in the same house, in great obedience to their common parent, unless age has weakened his understanding, and in that case he that is next to him in age comes in his room; but lest any city should become either too great, or by any accident be dispeopled, provision is made that none of their cities may contain above six thousand families, besides those of the country around it.  No family may have less than ten and more than sixteen persons in it, but there can be no determined number for the children under age; this rule is easily observed by removing some of the children of a more fruitful couple to any other family that does not abound so much in them. By the same rule they supply cities that do not increase so fast from others that breed faster; and if there is any increase over the whole island, then they draw out a number of their citizens out of the several towns and send them over to the neighbouring continent, where, if they find that the inhabitants have more soil than they can well cultivate, they fix a colony, taking the inhabitants into their society if they are willing to live with them; and where they do that of their own accord, they quickly enter into their method of life and conform to their rules, and this proves a happiness to both nations; for, according to their constitution, such care is taken of the soil that it becomes fruitful enough for both, though it might be otherwise too narrow and barren for any one of them. But if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they drive them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and use force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause of war for a nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence.  If an accident has so lessened the number of the inhabitants of any of their towns that it cannot be made up from the other towns of the island without diminishing them too much (which is said to have fallen out but twice since they were first a people, when great numbers were carried off by the plague), the loss is then supplied by recalling as many as are wanted from their colonies, for they will abandon these rather than suffer the towns in the island to sink too low.--Thomas More Utopia. Book II

In a famous footnote, which inspired many generations of Marxist historians, in chapter 28 of Capital, Book 1, Marx calls attention to, and quotes, the description of the deleterious effects of the violent enclosures on farming communities in Book 1 of Utopia. Marx attributes the quote to Thomas More and not to the character Raphael Hythloday. This is notable because Thomas More is also a character in Utopia, with a perspective distinct from Hythloday's. This makes Utopia notorious (recall this post) difficult to interpret because one cannot take for granted that any character, including More, speaks for the author. 

To the best of my knowledge Marx never commented on the passage quoted above. In context, it is Hythloday's description of Utopian policy (that he endorses). The first part of the paragraph describes some of the mechanisms the Utopians use to keep population in a fixed equilibrium. (Given that the Utopians have managed to root out famine, and run food surpluses, we can infer there are more mechanisms.) One of the mechanisms mentioned in the passage is the practice -- which resonates with known Greek and Roman history -- to send out colonists in order to control population in the homeland (Utopia).

The Utopian colonists settle in places where the land can support more inhabitants than the existing local population. At that point the colonized either voluntary allow themselves to be subsumed under the Utopians way of life or resist; and then get attacked by the Utopians.

At this point, Hythloday mentions the Utopian justification for colonial war: when "a nation [hinders] others from possessing a part of that soil of which they make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of the earth as is necessary for his subsistence."  This argument has been called "the agricultural argument" (by Thomas Flanagan) and it has been treated, as Barbara Arneil implies, as an anticipation of features of the Lockean proviso.

To be sure, the actual law of nature reported Hythloday is better understood as a kind of right of necessity. The idea that under great duress you can take from others some of their property in order to survive. This right of necessity was common ground in the sixteenth century, and we find echoes of it as late as Adam Smith and Sophie de Grouchy, although to the best of my knowledge it was not used to justify colonial war.

It is peculiar that Hythloday does not note that the justification for colonial war is patently being abused. The Utopian colonists are not starving at home. At any given time, the Utopians have two years' food stored. To repeat, they leave Utopia in order to keep the population stable (which is the point of the whole paragraph in context) not to flee famine. 

As an aside, when a few pages later, Hythloday, moves to the subject of war, he presents them as near pacifists: "They detest war as a very brutal thing, and which, to the reproach of human nature, is more practised by men than by any sort of beasts.  They, in opposition to the sentiments of almost all other nations, think that there is nothing more inglorious than that glory that is gained by war." It turns out that there are only three official justifications for war: (i) "either to defend themselves or their friends from any unjust aggressors;" (ii) or to "assist an oppressed nation in shaking off the yoke of tyranny." In addition, and somewhat surprisingly also (iii) "offensive wars" but they never do that "unless they had been consulted before the breach was made, and, being satisfied with the grounds on which they went, they had found that all demands of reparation were rejected, so that a war was unavoidable." Hythloday seems to have forgotten the justification for colonial wars.

To return to the main argument. The Utopian justification for colonial wars is, of course, not just rooted in version of the right of necessity. As we have seen it also relies on the idea that one has no right to keep others from appropriating uncultivated land. When Utopia was published (1517), the Spanish were just starting their colonial projects. (Hythloday is presented as Portuguese who had traveled, in part, with Amerigo Vespucci.) So, the book has an uncanny prophetic quality. It is, then, no surprise that this feature of the Utopian justification for colonial wars are thought to anticipate Locke (recall):

Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land, by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough and as good left, and more than the yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less left for others because of his enclosure for himself. For he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. Nobody could think himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left him to quench his thirst. And the case of land and water, where there is enough of both, is perfectly the same.

It is uncanny how much this resembles the Utopian frame of mind. After all, the whole point of Utopian ideology and practice is to improve the land. Of course, the Utopians have no interest in defending individual property rights (Locke); their colonies also embrace communal ownership.+  And while I don't mean to suggest that the Utopians have an explicit formulation of the spoilage condition, they would clearly endorse it.* 

I close with three observations: first, the pre-history of the Lockean proviso explicitly involves a colonial project. Second, the Lockean proviso has roots in very egalitarian tendencies (for the in-group); this suggests that -- pace my colleague Bas Van der Vossen -- the left libertarian interpretation of Locke may well be defensible on broader contextual grounds. 

Third, and finally, there is no contradiction between Hythloday's endorsement of colonial land-grabbing of idle land, and his criticism of enclosure of the commons (which need not be idle, after all). It is uncanny how, when discussing colonialism and Wakefield's political economy, in chapter 33 of Capital, Marx sees the connection: "We have seen that the expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil forms the basis of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of a free colony, on the contrary, consists in this — that the bulk of the soil is still public property."

Of course, Marx goes on to say that the: "secret" of prosperity is that "every settler on it therefore can turn part of it into his private property and individual means of production, without hindering the later settlers in the same operation." But, analytically, as More discerned, this is also true of communist settler colonies.