Critique of political economy

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Critique of political economy or critique of economy is a critique that questions the very object of the economy, and hence reject the axioms, institutions and social categories, abstractions as well as the entire paradigm of what is usually referred to as "the economy".

The critics of economy tend to agree that practices, assumptions, and concepts that are commonplace within the field of economics are unscientific. As well as claim that these phenomena are rather caused by societal and or normative practices than any self-evident laws. Therefore, critics of political economy commonly view what is most commonly referred to as "the economy" as being bundles of metaphysical concepts and societal practices. Critics of political economy do not view "the economy", or related categories, as transhistorical, but rather as relatively new in history, emerging along with capitalist modernity. Critics of political economy aim to critique the economy itself, and hence don't aim to create theories regarding how to administer economies, as done in conventional economics.

There are multiple critiques of political economy today, but what they have in common is critique of the dogma which claims "the economy" as a necessary societal category. Regarding contemporary Marxian criticisms, these are also generally accompanied by a rejection of more naturalistically influenced readings of Marx critique of political economy, as well as other readings later deemed "weltanschaaungsmarxismus" ("worldview marxism"), that was popularized as late as toward the end of the 20th century.

According to some Marxist scholars, contemporary critiques of political economy and contemporary German Ökonomiekritik have been at least partly neglected in the anglophone world.

Ruskin's critique of political economy

John Ruskin in his thirties.

In the 1860s, John Ruskin published his essay Unto This Last which he came to view as his central work. The essay was originally written as a series of publications in a magazine, which ended up having to suspend the publications, due to the severe controversy the articles caused. While Ruskin is generally known as an important art critic, his study of the history of art was a component that gave him some insight into the pre-capitalist societies of the middle ages, and their social organization. Through this insight, he was able to take a different view of the concept of "the economy" as it was envisaged by the classical economists John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Ruskin viewed "the economy" as a kind of "collective mental lapse or collective concussion", and he viewed the emphasis on precision in industry as a kind of slavery. Due to the fact that Ruskin regarded "the economy" as "mad", he said that it interested him as much as "a science of gymnastics which had as its axiom that human beings in fact didn't have skeletons". Ruskin declared that economics rests on positions that are exactly the same. According to Ruskin, these axioms resemble thinking, not that human beings do not have skeletons, but rather that they consist entirely of skeletons. Ruskin wrote that he didn't oppose the truth value of this theory, he merely wrote that he denied that it could be successfully implemented in the world in the state it was in.

Gandhi, one of those who was influenced by Ruskin. Gandhi even translated his central work Unto This Last into Gujarati in 1908.

Ruskin also coined the term Illth to refer to the reverse position of wealth. Ruskin is not well known today, but in 1906, a journalist asked the first generation of Labour MPs which book had most inspired them, Unto This Last emerged as an undisputed chart-topper.

[...] the art of becoming "rich," in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumulating much money for ourselves, but also of contriving that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is "the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour."

— Ruskin, Unto this last

Criticism of Ruskin's analysis by Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels regarded much of Ruskin's critique as rather reactionary. His idealization of the Middle Ages made them reject him as a "feudal utopian".

Marx's critique of political economy

Karl Marx, author of Das Kapital (Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie) [Capital: A Critique of Political Economy].

Karl Marx is probably the most famous critic of political economy. However Marx's companion Friedrich Engels also critiqued the economy in his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844), which helped lay down some foundation for what Marx was to take further. Marx's critique of political economy encompasses the study and exposition of the mode of production and ideology of bourgeois society, and its critique of "Realabstraktionen" ["real abstraction"], that is, the fundamental "economic" and social categories present within what for Marx is the capitalist mode of production, for example abstract labour. In contrast to the classics of political economy, Marx was concerned with lifting the "ideological veil" of surface phenomena and exposing the norms, axioms, social practices, institutions and so on, that reproduced capital. The central works in Marx's critique of political economy are Grundrisse, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Das Kapital. Marx's works are often explicitly named – for example: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Marx also cited Engels' article Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy several times in Das Kapital. However Trotskyists and other Leninists tend to implicitly or explicitly argue that these works constitute and or contain "economical theories" which can be studied independently. This was also the common understanding of Marx's work on economy that was put forward by Soviet orthodoxy. Since this is the case, it remains a matter of controversy whether Marx's critique of political economy is to be understood as a critique of the political economy or, according to the orthodox interpretation another theory of economics. The critique of political economy is considered the most important and central project within what is usually referred to as "Marxism", which has led to, and continues to lead to a large number of advanced approaches within and outside academic circles.

Foundational concepts in Marx critique of political economy

• Labour and capital are historically specific forms of social relations, and labour isn't the source of all wealth.
• Labour is the other side of the same coin as capital, labour presupposes capital, and capital presupposes labour.
• Money is not in any way something transhistorical or "natural" (which goes for the other categories of the economy as well), and gains its value due to social relations rather than any inherent quality.
• The individual doesn't exist in some form of vacuum but is rather enmeshed in social relations.

Economists: religious and ahistorical thought

Marx described the view of contemporaneous economists and theologians on social phenomena as similarly unscientific.

"Economists have a singular method of procedure. There are only two kinds of institutions for them, artificial and natural. The institutions of feudalism are artificial institutions, those of the bourgeoisie are natural institutions. In this, they resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. When the economists say that present-day relations – the relations of bourgeois production – are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations, therefore, are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws that must always govern society. Thus, there has been history, but there is no longer any. There has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal."

— Marx: The Poverty of Philosophy

Marx continued to emphasize the ahistorical thought of the modern economists in the Grundrisse, where he critiqued Mill.

He also viewed the viewpoints which implicitly regarded the institutions of modernity to be transhistorical as fundamentally ahistorical.

Individuals producing in society, and hence the socially determined production of individuals, is, of course, the point of departure. The solitary and isolated hunter or fisherman, who serves Adam Smith and Ricardo as a starting point, is one of the unimaginative fantasies of eighteenth-century romances a la Robinson Crusoe; and despite the assertions of social historians, these by no means signify simply a reaction against over-refinement and reversion to a misconceived natural life. No more is Rousseau's contract social, which by means of a contract establishes a relationship and connection between subjects that are by nature independent, based on this kind of naturalism. This is an illusion and nothing but the aesthetic illusion of the small and big Robinsonades. It is, on the contrary, the anticipation of "bourgeois society," which began to evolve in the sixteenth century and in the eighteenth century made giant strides towards maturity. The individual in this society of free competition seems to be rid of natural ties, etc., which made him an appurtenance of a particular, limited aggregation of human beings in previous historical epochs. The prophets of the eighteenth century, on whose shoulders Adam Smith and Ricardo were still wholly standing, envisaged this 18th-century individual – a product of the dissolution of feudal society on the one hand and of the new productive forces evolved since the sixteenth century on the other – as an ideal whose existence belonged to the past. They saw this individual not as a historical result, but as the starting point of history; not as something evolving in the course of history, but posited by nature, because for them this individual was in conformity with nature, in keeping with their idea of human nature. This delusion has been characteristic of every new epoch hitherto.

— Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (Introduction)

Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen oekonomie [Capital: critique of political economy] is a famous critique of political economy written by Karl Marx

According to Jacques Rancière, what Marx understood, and what the economists failed to recognize was that the value-form isn't something essential, but merely a part of the capitalist mode of production.

On proper scientific inquiry

Marx also offered a critique regarding the idea of people being able to conduct scientific research in this domain. Or, as he stated it himself:

"In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean, and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Nowadays atheism is culpa levis [a relatively slight sin, c.f. mortal sin], as compared with criticism of existing property relations."

— Marx: Das Kapital (Preface to the First German Edition)

On vulgar economists

Marx also used to criticize the false critique of political economy of his contemporaries. Something he did, sometimes even more forcefully, than he critiqued the classical, and hence 'vulgar' economists. He for example rejected Lasalle's 'iron and inexorable law' of wages, which he simply regarded as mere phraseology. As well as Proudhon's attempts to do what Hegel did for religion, law, etc, for political economy, as well as regarding what is social as subjective, and what was societal as merely subjective abstractions. In Marx's view, the errors of these authors led the workers' movement astray.

Interpretations of Marx's critique of political economy

Some who engage with Marx's critique of political economy affirm the critique might assume a more Kantian sense, which transforms "Marx's work into a foray concerning the imminent antinomies that lie at the heart of capitalism, where politics and economy intertwine in impossible ways." Others view Marx's critique as being a critique of commodity fetishism and the manner in which this concept expresses a criticism of modernity and its modes of socialization.

Critique of Marx's critique of political economy

The postmodern philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, has critiqued Marx's critique of political economy in his 1973 book Le Miroir de la production. He views Marx as being stuck in the very categories he wanted to critique.

Critique of political economy versus common economic criticism

One may differentiate proper critique of the political economy, which takes on a more ontological character, where authors criticise the fundamental concepts and categories which make up the economy as an entity in itself. Other authors who put forward a more common economic criticism does, from the perspective of the critics of political economy, merely critique "certain practices" in attempts to implicitly or explicitly 'rescue' the political economy by critique; these authors might for example propose universal basic income, planned economy or other interventions to "keep the economy running". Or aim to simply point out that economic theories very often don't correspond with reality at all due to assumptions which are so outlandish that they are impossible to believe in. However these movements and criticisms seldom critique the very concept of economy, but implicitly regard it as a transhistorical phenomenon. Those who proclaim themselves "Marxist economists", have been rather active in suppressing the Marxian critique of political economy during the 20th century.

List of critics of political economy

Contemporary

Sociologists

• Orlando Patterson, John Cowles professor of sociology at Harvard University is also a critic of economics, which he claims is pseudoscience.

Mathematicians

• Claus Peter Ortlieb was a german mathematician who among other engagements was a critic of political economy. He was also critical of the lacking nature of the mathematical tools used by contemporary "economists", and by scientists generally.

Historians

• The scholar Rasmus Fleischer has utilized methodology related to critique of political economy in his award-winning dissertation The political economy of music, law auditory media, and the defence of live music, 1925-2000.

Philosophers

• Jean Baudrillard
• Mark Fisher
• Moishe Postone
• Robert Kurz
• Slavoj Žižek

Historical

Historians

• Roman Rozdolsky.

Poets

• Carl Jonas Love Almqvist had a romantic critique of political economy.
• The Swedish poet August Strindberg also critiqued political economy.

Others

• A critic of political economy who is also was a critic of work is Paul Lafargue.^[70]

Teleology in biology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleology_in_biology 

 

"Behaviour with a purpose": a young springbok stotting. A biologist might argue that this has the function of signalling to predators, helping the springbok to survive and allowing it to reproduce.

Teleology in biology is the use of the language of goal-directedness in accounts of evolutionary adaptation, which some biologists and philosophers of science find problematic. The term teleonomy has also been proposed. Before Darwin, organisms were seen as existing because God had designed and created them; their features such as eyes were taken by natural theology to have been made to enable them to carry out their functions, such as seeing. Evolutionary biologists often use similar teleological formulations that invoke purpose, but these imply natural selection rather than actual goals, whether conscious or not. Dissenting biologists and religious thinkers held that evolution itself was somehow goal-directed (orthogenesis), and in vitalist versions, driven by a purposeful life force. Since such views are now discredited, with evolution working by natural selection acting on inherited variation, the use of teleology in biology has attracted criticism, and attempts have been made to teach students to avoid teleological language.

Nevertheless, biologists still often write about evolution as if organisms had goals, and some philosophers of biology such as Francisco Ayala and biologists such as J. B. S. Haldane consider that teleological language is unavoidable in evolutionary biology.

Context

Teleology

Main article: Teleology

Teleology, from Greek τέλος, telos "end, purpose" and -λογία, logia, "a branch of learning", was coined by the philosopher Christian von Wolff in 1728. The concept derives from the ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle, where the final cause (the purpose) of a thing is its function. However, Aristotle's biology does not envisage evolution by natural selection.

Phrases used by biologists like "a function of ... is to ..." or "is designed for" are teleological at least in language. The presence of real or apparent teleology in explanations of natural selection is a controversial aspect of the philosophy of biology, not least for its echoes of natural theology.

The English natural theologian John Ray, and later William Derham, used teleological arguments to illustrate the glory of God from nature.

Natural theology

Main article: Natural theology

Before Darwin, natural theology both assumed the existence of God and used the appearance of function in nature to argue for the existence of God. The English parson-naturalist John Ray stated that his intention was "to illustrate the glory of God in the knowledge of the works of nature or creation". Natural theology presented forms of the teleological argument or argument from design, namely that organs functioned well for their apparent purpose, so they were well-designed, so they must have been designed by a benevolent creator. For example, the eye had the function of seeing, and contained features like the iris and lens that assisted with seeing; therefore, ran the argument, it had been designed for that purpose.

Goal-directed evolution

Main articles: Orthogenesis and Vitalism

Religious thinkers and biologists have repeatedly supposed that evolution was driven by some kind of life force, a philosophy known as vitalism, and have often supposed that it had some kind of goal or direction (towards which the life force was striving, if they also believed in that), known as orthogenesis or evolutionary progress. Such goal-directedness implies a long-term teleological force; some supporters of orthogenesis considered it to be a spiritual force, while others held that it was purely biological. For example, the Russian embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer believed in a teleological force in nature, whereas the French spiritualist philosopher Henri Bergson linked orthogenesis with vitalism, arguing for a creative force in evolution known as élan vital in his book Creative Evolution (1907). The French biophysicist Pierre Lecomte du Noüy and the American botanist Edmund Ware Sinnott developed vitalist evolutionary philosophies known as telefinalism and telism respectively. Their views were heavily criticized as non-scientific; the palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson argued that Du Noüy and Sinnott were promoting religious versions of evolution. The Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin argued that evolution was aiming for a supposed spiritual "Omega Point" in what he called "directed additivity". With the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis, in which the genetic mechanisms of evolution were discovered, the hypothesis of orthogenesis was largely abandoned by biologists, especially with Ronald Fisher's argument in his 1930 book The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection.

Natural selection

Main articles: Natural selection and Evolution

Natural selection, introduced in 1859 as the central mechanism of evolution by Charles Darwin, is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. The mechanism directly implies evolution, a change in heritable traits of a population over time.

Adaptation

Feathers today serve the function of flight, but they were co-opted rather than adapted for this task, having evolved for an earlier purpose in theropods like Sinornithosaurus millenii, perhaps insulation.

 

Main articles: Adaptation and Function (biology)

A trait which persists in a population is often assumed by biologists to have been selected for in the course of evolution, raising the question of how the trait achieves this. Biologists call any such mechanism the function of the trait, using phrases like "A function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to predators that they have been detected", or "The primate hand is designed (by natural selection) for grasping."

An adaptation is an observable structure or other feature of an organism (for example, an enzyme) generated by natural selection to serve its current function. A biologist might propose the hypothesis that feathers are adaptations for bird flight. That would require three things: that the trait of having feathers is heritable; that the trait does serve the function of flight; and that the trait increases the fitness of the organisms that have it. Feathers clearly meet these three conditions in living birds. However, there is also a historical question, namely, did the trait arise at the same time as bird flight? Unfortunately for the hypothesis, this seems not to be so: theropod dinosaurs had feathers, but many of them did not fly. Feathers can be described as an exaptation, having been co-opted for flight but having evolved earlier for another purpose such as insulation. Biologists may describe both the co-option and the earlier adaptation in teleological language.

Status in evolutionary biology

Further information: Tinbergen's four questions

Reasons for discomfort

Apparent teleology is a recurring issue in evolutionary biology, much to the consternation of some writers, and as an explanatory style it remains controversial. There are various reasons for discomfort with teleology among biologists.

Firstly, the concept of adaptation is itself controversial, as it can be taken to imply, as the evolutionary biologists Stephen J. Gould and Richard Lewontin argued, that biologists agree with Voltaire's Doctor Pangloss in his 1759 satire Candide that this is "the best of all possible worlds", in other words that every trait is perfectly suited to its functions. However, all that evolutionary biology requires is the weaker claim that one trait is at least slightly better in a certain context than another, and hence is selected for.

The Watchmaker analogy argues that the presence of a complex mechanism like a watch implies the existence of a conscious designer.

Secondly, teleology is linked to the pre-Darwinian idea of natural theology, that the natural world gives evidence of the conscious design and beneficent intentions of a creator, as in the writings of John Ray. William Derham continued Ray's tradition with books such as his 1713 Physico-Theology and his 1714 Astro-Theology. They in turn influenced William Paley who wrote a detailed teleological argument for God in 1802, Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, starting with the Watchmaker analogy. Such creationism, along with a vitalist life-force and directed orthogenetic evolution, has been rejected by most biologists.

Thirdly, attributing purposes to adaptations risks confusion with popular forms of Lamarckism where animals in particular have been supposed to influence their own evolution through their intentions, though Lamarck himself spoke rather of habits of use, and the belief that his thinking was teleological has been challenged.

Fourthly, the teleological explanation of adaptation is uncomfortable because it seems to require backward causation, in which existing traits are explained by future outcomes; because it seems to attribute the action of a conscious mind when none is assumed to be present in an organism; and because, as a result, adaptation looks impossible to test empirically.

A fifth reason concerns students rather than researchers: Gonzalez Galli argues that since people naturally imagine that evolution has a purpose or direction, then the use of teleological language by scientists may act as an obstacle to students when learning about natural selection. Such language, he argues, should be removed to make teaching more effective.

Removable teleological shorthand

Statements which imply that nature has goals, for example where a species is said to do something "in order to" achieve survival, appear teleological, and therefore invalid to evolutionary biologists. It is however usually possible to rewrite such sentences to avoid the apparent teleology. Some biology courses have incorporated exercises requiring students to rephrase such sentences so that they do not read teleologically. Nevertheless, biologists still frequently write in a way which can be read as implying teleology, even though that is not their intention. John Reiss argues that evolutionary biology can be purged of apparent teleology by rejecting the pre-Darwinian watchmaker analogy for natural selection; other arguments against this analogy have also been promoted by writers such as the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins.

Some philosophers of biology such as James G. Lennox have argued that Darwin was a teleologist, while others like Michael Ghiselin described this claim as a myth promoted by misinterpretations of his discussions, and emphasized the distinction between using teleological metaphors and actually being teleological. Michael Heads, on the other hand, describes a change in Darwin's thinking about evolution that can be traced from the first volume of On the Origin of Species to later volumes. For Heads, Darwin was originally a far more teleological thinker, but over time, "learned to avoid teleology." Heads cites a letter Darwin wrote in 1872, in which he downplayed the role of natural selection as a causal force on its own in explaining biological adaptation, and instead gave more weight to "laws of growth," that operate [without the aid of natural selection].

Andrew Askland, from the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law claims that unlike transhumanism, an ideology that aims to improve the human condition, which he asserts is "wholly teleological", Darwinian evolution is not teleological.

Various commentators view the teleological phrases used in modern evolutionary biology as a type of shorthand for describing any function which offers an evolutionary advantage through natural selection. For example, the zoologist S. H. P. Madrell wrote that "the proper but cumbersome way of describing change by evolutionary adaptation [may be] substituted by shorter overtly teleological statements" for the sake of saving space, but that this "should not be taken to imply that evolution proceeds by anything other than from mutations arising by chance, with those that impart an advantage being retained by natural selection."

Irreducible teleology

Other philosophers of biology argue instead that biological teleology is irreducible, and cannot be removed by any simple process of rewording. Francisco Ayala specified three separate situations in which teleological explanations are appropriate. First, if the agent consciously anticipates the goal of their own action; for example the behavior of picking up a pen can be explained by reference to the agent's desire to write. Ayala extends this type of teleological explanation to non-human animals by noting that A deer running away from a mountain lion. . . has at least the appearance of purposeful behavior." Second, teleological explanations are useful for systems that have a mechanism for self-regulation despite fluctuations in environment; for example, the self-regulation of body temperature in animals. Finally, they are appropriate "in reference to structures anatomically and physiologically designed to perform a certain function. "

Ayala, relying on work done by philosopher Ernest Nagel, also rejects the idea that teleological arguments are inadmissible because they cannot be causal. For Nagel, teleological arguments must be consistent because they can always be reformulated as non-teleological arguments. The difference between the two is, for Ayala, merely one of emphasis. Nagel writes that while teleological arguments focus on "the consequences for a given system of a constituent part or process," the equivalent non-teleological arguments focus on ""some of the conditions ... under which the system persists in its characteristic organization and activities." However, Francisco Ayala argued that teleological statements are more explanatory and cannot be disposed of. Karen Neander similarly argued that the modern concept of biological 'function' depends on natural selection. So, for example, it is not possible to say that anything that simply winks into existence, without going through a process of selection, actually has functions. We decide whether an appendage has a function by analysing the process of selection that led to it. Therefore, Neander argues, any talk of functions must be posterior to natural selection, function must be defined by reference to the history of a species, and teleology cannot be avoided. The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr likewise stated that "adaptedness ... is an a posteriori result rather than an a priori goal-seeking."

Angela Breitenbach, looking at the question of teleology in biology from a Kantian perspective, argues that teleology is important as "a heuristic in the search for causal explanations of nature and ... an inevitable analogical perspective on living beings." In her view of Kant, teleology implies something that cannot be explained by science, but only understood through analogy.

Colin Pittendrigh coined the similar term 'teleonomy' for apparently goal-directed biological phenomena. For Pittendrigh, the notion of 'adaptation' in biology, however it is defined, necessarily "connote that aura of design, purpose, or end-directedness, which has, since the time of Aristotle, seemed to characterize the living thing." This association with Aristotle, however, is problematic, because it meant that the study of adaptation would inevitably be bound up with teleological explanations. Pittendrigh sought to preserve the aspect of design and purpose in biological systems, while denying that this design can be understood as a causal principle. The confusion, he says, would be removed if we described these systems "by some other term, like 'teleonomic,' in order to emphasize that the recognition and description of end-directedness does not carry a commitment to Aristotelian teleology as an efficient causal principle." Ernst Mayr criticised Pittendrigh's confusion of Aristotle's four causes, arguing that evolution only involved the material and formal but not the efficient cause. Mayr proposed to use the term only for "systems operating on the basis of a program of coded information."

William C. Wimsatt affirmed that the teleologicality of the language of biology and other fields derives from the logical structure of their background theories, and not merely from the use of teleological locutions such as "function" and "in order to". He stated that "To replace talk about function by talk about selection [...] is not to eliminate teleology but to rephrase it". However, Wimsatt argues that this thought does not mean an appeal to backwards causation, vitalism, entelechy, or anti-reductionist sentiments.

The biologist J. B. S. Haldane observed that "Teleology is like a mistress to a biologist: he cannot live without her but he's unwilling to be seen with her in public."

Late capitalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism 

Late capitalism, or late-stage capitalism, is a term first used in print by German economist Werner Sombart around the turn of the 20th century. In the late 2010s, the term began to be used in the United States and Canada to refer to perceived absurdities, contradictions, crises, injustices, and inequality created by modern business development.

Later capitalism refers to the historical epoch since 1940, including the post–World War II economic expansion called the "golden age of capitalism". The expression already existed for a long time in continental Europe, before it gained popularity in the English-speaking world through the English translation of Ernest Mandel's book Late Capitalism, published in 1975.

The German original edition of Mandel's work was subtitled "an attempt at an explanation", meaning that Mandel tried to provide an orthodox Marxist explanation of the post-war epoch in terms of Marx's theory of the capitalist mode of production. Mandel suggested that important qualitative changes occurred within the capitalist system during and after World War II and that there are limits to capitalist development.

History of the term

The term "late capitalism" was first used by Werner Sombart in his magnum opus Der Moderne Kapitalismus, which was published from 1902 through 1927, and subsequent writings; Sombart divided capitalism into different stages: (1) proto-capitalist society from the early middle ages up to 1500 AD, (2) early capitalism in 1500–1800, (3) the heyday of capitalism (Hochkapitalismus) from 1800 to the first World War, and (4) late capitalism since then. Sombart's work was never translated into English, but historians sometimes do refer to late bourgeois society in contrast to early bourgeois society in the 17th and 18th century, or classical bourgeois society in the 19th and early 20th century.

Vladimir Lenin famously declared that there are no "absolutely hopeless situations" for capitalism. The Communist International stated that with the first World War, a new world epoch of wars and revolutions had opened, and it defined state monopoly capitalism as the highest and final stage of capitalism.

The term late capitalism began to be used by socialists in continental Europe towards the end of the 1930s and in the 1940s, when many economists believed capitalism was doomed. At the end of World War II, many economists, including Joseph Schumpeter and Paul Samuelson, believed the end of capitalism could be near, in that the economic problems might be insurmountable.

The term was used in the 1960s in Germany and Austria, by Western Marxists writing in the tradition of the Frankfurt School and Austromarxism. Leo Michielsen and Andre Gorz popularized the term "neo-capitalism" in France and Belgium, with new analyses of the new post-war capitalism. Jacques Derrida preferred neo-capitalism to post- or late-capitalism. Theodor Adorno preferred "late capitalism" over "industrial society," which was the theme of the 16th Congress of German Sociologists in 1968. In 1971, Leo Kofler published a book called Technologische Rationalität im Spätkapitalismus (Technological Rationality in Late Capitalism). Claus Offe published his essay "Spätkapitalismus – Versuch einer Begriffsbestimmung" (Late capitalism – an attempt at a conceptual definition) in 1972. In 1973, Jürgen Habermas published his Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (Legitimacy problems in late capitalism). In 1975, Ernest Mandel published his PhD thesis Late Capitalism in English at New Left Books. Herbert Marcuse also accepted the term.

Immanuel Wallerstein believed that capitalism was in the process of being replaced by another world system. The American literary critic and cultural theorist Frederic Jameson thought Rudolf Hilferding's term the latest stage of capitalism (jüngster Kapitalismus) perhaps more prudent and less prophetic-sounding but Jameson often used "late capitalism" in his writings. Hegel's theme of "the end of history" was rekindled by Kojève in his Introduction to the Reading of Hegel. The "end of history" is discussed by Francis Fukuyama in the sense that liberal democracy is the ultimate form of society, which cannot be surpassed by anything that is superior to it, because there does not and cannot exist anything superior. In modern usage, late capitalism often refers to a new mix of high-tech advances, the concentration of (speculative) financial capital, post-Fordism, and a growing income inequality.

Ernest Mandel

According to the Marxist economist Ernest Mandel, who popularised the term with his 1972 PhD dissertation, late-stage capitalism will be dominated by the machinations—or perhaps better, fluidities—of financial capital; and also by the increasing commodification and industrialisation of ever more inclusive sectors of human life. Mandel believed that "[f]ar from representing a 'post-industrial society', late capitalism [...] constitutes generalized universal industrialization for the first time in history".

Up to the mid-1960s, Mandel preferred to use the term "neo-capitalism", which was most often used by intellectuals in Belgium and France around that time. This term drew attention to new characterististics of capitalism, but at the time ultra-leftist Marxists objected to it, because, according to them, it might suggest that capitalism was no longer capitalism, and it might lead to reformist errors rather than the overthrow of capitalism.

In his work Late Capitalism, Mandel distinguished three periods in the development of the capitalist mode of production.

• Freely competitive capitalist production, roughly from 1700 to 1870, through the growth of industrial capital in domestic markets.
• The phase of monopoly capitalism, roughly from 1870 to 1940, is characterized by the imperialist competition for international markets, and the exploitation of colonial territories.
• The epoch of late capitalism emerging out of the Second World War, which has as its dominant features the multinational corporation, globalized markets and labor, mass consumption, and the space of liquid multinational flows of capital.

In the tradition of the orthodox Marxists, Mandel tried to characterize the nature of the modern epoch as a whole, with reference to the main laws of motion of capitalism specified by Marx. Mandel's aim was to explain the unexpected revival of capitalism after World War II, contrary to leftist prognostications, and the long economic boom which showed the fastest economic growth ever seen in human history. His work has produced a new interest in the theory of long waves in economic development.

Fredric Jameson

Main article: Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson borrowed Mandel's vision as a basis for his widely cited Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Jameson's postmodernity involves a new mode of cultural production (developments in literature, film, fine art, video, social theory, etc.) which differs markedly from the preceding era of Modernism, particularly in its treatment of subject position, temporality and narrative.

In the modernist era, the dominant ideology was that society could be re-engineered on the basis of scientific and technical knowledge, and on the basis of a popular consensus about the meaning of progress. From the second half of the 20th century, however, modernism was gradually eclipsed by postmodernism, which is skeptical about social engineering and features a lack of consensus about the meaning of progress. In the wake of rapid technological and social change, all the old certainties have broken down. This begins to destabilize every part of life, making almost everything malleable, changeable, transient and impermanent.

Jameson argues that "every position on postmodernism today — whether apologia or stigmatization — is also...necessarily an implicitly or explicitly political stance on the nature of multinational capitalism today". A section of Jameson's analysis has been reproduced on the Marxists Internet Archive. Jameson regards the late capitalist stage as a new and previously unparalleled development with a global reach — whether defined as a multinational or informational capitalism. At the same time, late capitalism diverges from Marx's prognosis for the final stage of capitalism.

Modern usage of the phrase and further evolution

According to a 2017 article in The Atlantic, the term "late capitalism" is again in vogue to describe modern business culture, although with a semantic change or an ironic twist. "Late capitalism" has become a catch-all term for various phenomena that express capitalism's distortions of human life, and it is often used in critique and satire. This usage also conveys a sense that contemporary capitalism cannot go on like it does forever, because the problems created by business are getting too large and unmanageable.

The phrase “late stage capitalism” is used commonly as a critique of the fascistic qualities that emerge in the later stages of capitalism. Capitalism to many may seem to be free of this exploitation if not taken to the extremes of “late capitalism”. A competing viewpoint is that “Capitalism, in its orthodoxy, is a system that relies on authoritative, controlling, and exploitative relationships, most notably between that of capitalists and workers”, and that this is not something that emerges out of a devolving system but rather is present in the framework of the system itself.

In popular culture

A character in Thomas Pynchon's 2013 novel Bleeding Edge states "late capitalism is a pyramid racket on a global scale...getting the suckers to believe it's all gonna go on forever."

Decadence

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadence 

An orgy in Imperial Rome, by Henryk Siemiradzki

 

Romans during the Decadence, by Thomas Couture

The word decadence, which at first meant simply "decline" in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, honor, discipline, or skill at governing among the members of the elite of a very large social structure, such as an empire or nation state. By extension, it may refer to a decline in art, literature, science, technology, and work ethics, or (very loosely) to self-indulgent behavior.

Usage of the term sometimes implies moral censure, or an acceptance of the idea, met with throughout the world since ancient times, that such declines are objectively observable and that they inevitably precede the destruction of the society in question; for this reason, modern historians use it with caution. The word originated in Medieval Latin (dēcadentia), appeared in 16th-century French, and entered English soon afterwards. It bore the neutral meaning of decay, decrease, or decline until the late 19th century, when the influence of new theories of social degeneration contributed to its modern meaning.

In literature, the Decadent movement—late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers who were associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement—was first given its name by hostile critics. Later it was triumphantly adopted by some of the writers themselves. The Decadents praised artifice over nature and sophistication over simplicity, defying contemporary discourses of decline by embracing subjects and styles that their critics considered morbid and over-refined. Some of these writers were influenced by the tradition of the Gothic novel and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

History

Ancient Rome

Main article: Roman decadence

A classic example of decadence is the late Roman Empire, often described as characterized by "extravagance, weakness, and sexual deviance", as well as "orgies and sensual excesses".

Decadent movement

Main article: Decadent movement

 

Pornocrates by Félicien Rops (1878)

Decadence was the name given to a number of late nineteenth-century writers who valued artifice over the earlier Romantics' naïve view of nature. Some of them triumphantly adopted the name, referring to themselves as Decadents. For the most part, they were influenced by the tradition of the Gothic novel and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe, and were associated with Symbolism and/or Aestheticism.

This concept of decadence dates from the eighteenth century, especially from Montesquieu, and was taken up by critics as a term of abuse after Désiré Nisard used it against Victor Hugo and Romanticism in general. A later generation of Romantics, such as Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire took the word as a badge of pride, as a sign of their rejection of what they saw as banal "progress." In the 1880s, a group of French writers referred to themselves as Decadents. The classic novel from this group is Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature, often seen as the first great decadent work, though others attribute this honor to Baudelaire's works.

In Britain and Ireland the leading figure associated with the Decadent movement was Irish writer, Oscar Wilde. Other significant figures include Arthur Symons, Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson.

The Symbolist movement has frequently been confused with the Decadent movement. Several young writers were derisively referred to in the press as "decadent" in the mid-1880s. Jean Moréas' manifesto was largely a response to this polemic. A few of these writers embraced the term while most avoided it. Although the aesthetics of Symbolism and Decadence can be seen as overlapping in some areas, the two remain distinct.

1920s Berlin

Main article: 1920s Berlin

See also: Roaring twenties and Weimar culture

This "fertile culture" of Berlin extended onwards until Adolf Hitler rose to power in early 1933 and stamped out any and all resistance to the Nazi Party. Likewise, the German far-right decried Berlin as a haven of vice. A new culture developed in and around Berlin, including architecture and design (Bauhaus, 1919–33), a variety of literature (Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929), film (Lang, Metropolis, 1927, Dietrich, Der blaue Engel, 1930), painting (Grosz), and music (Brecht and Weill, The Threepenny Opera, 1928), criticism (Benjamin), philosophy/psychology (Jung), and fashion. This culture was often considered to be decadent, and socially, morally, destructive.

Film was making huge technical and artistic strides during this period of time in Berlin, and gave rise to the influential movement called German Expressionism. "Talkies", the Sound films, were also becoming more popular with the general public across Europe, and Berlin was producing very many of them.

Berlin in the 1920s also proved to be a haven for English-language writers such as W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood, who wrote a series of 'Berlin novels', inspiring the play I Am a Camera, which was later adapted into a musical, Cabaret, and an Academy Award winning film of the same name. Spender's semi-autobiographical novel The Temple evokes the attitude and atmosphere of the place at the time.

21st century

Jacques Barzun

The historian Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) gives a definition of decadence which is independent from moral judgement. In his bestseller From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (published 2000) he describes decadent eras as times when "the forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully." He emphasizes that "decadent" in his view is "not a slur" but "a technical label".

With reference to Barzun, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat characterises decadence as a state of "economic stagnation, institutional decay and cultural and intellectual exhaustion at a high level of material prosperity and technological development". Douthat sees the West in the 21st century in an "age of decadence", marked by stalemate and stagnation. He is the author of the book The Decadent Society, published by Simon & Schuster in 2020. According to the news website Vox, "Douthat’s definition of a 'decadent society' is that we’re trapped in a stale system that keeps spinning in place, reproducing the same arguments and frustrations over and over again."

Pria Viswalingam

Pria Viswalingam, an Australian documentary and film maker, sees the western world in decay since the late 1960s. Viswalingam is the author of the six-episode documentary TV series Decadence: The Meaninglessness of Modern Life, broadcast in 2006 and 2007, and the 2011 documentary film Decadence: The Decline of the Western World.

According to Viswalingam, western culture started in 1215 with the Magna Carta, continued to the Renaissance, the Reformation, the founding of America, the Enlightenment and culminated with the social revolutions of the 1960s.

Since 1969, the year of the moon landing, the My Lai massacre, the Woodstock Festival and the Altamont Free Concert, "decadence depicts the west's decline". As symptoms he names increasing suicide rates, addiction to anti-depressants, exaggerated individualism, broken families and a loss of religious faith as well as "treadmill consumption, growing income-disparity, b-grade leadership" and money as the only benchmark for value.

Use in Marxism

Leninism

According to Vladimir Lenin, capitalism had reached its highest stage and could no longer provide for the general development of society. He expected reduced vigor in economic activity and a growth in unhealthy economic phenomena, reflecting capitalism's gradually decreasing capacity to provide for social needs and preparing the ground for socialist revolution in the West. Politically, World War I proved the decadent nature of the advanced capitalist countries to Lenin, that capitalism had reached the stage where it would destroy its own prior achievements more than it would advance.

One who directly opposed the idea of decadence as expressed by Lenin was José Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses (1930). He argued that the "mass man" had the notion of material progress and scientific advance deeply inculcated to the extent that it was an expectation. He also argued that contemporary progress was opposite the true decadence of the Roman Empire.

Left communism

Decadence is an important aspect of contemporary left communist theory. Similar to Lenin's use of it, left communists, coming from the Communist International themselves started in fact with a theory of decadence in the first place, yet the communist left sees the theory of decadence at the heart of Marx's method as well, expressed in famous works such as The Communist Manifesto, Grundrisse, Das Kapital but most significantly in Preface to the Critique of Political Economy.

Contemporary left communist theory defends that Lenin was mistaken on his definition of imperialism (although how grave his mistake was and how much of his work on imperialism is valid varies from groups to groups) and Rosa Luxemburg to be basically correct on this question, thus accepting capitalism as a world epoch similarly to Lenin, but a world epoch from which no capitalist state can oppose or avoid being a part of. On the other hand, the theoretical framework of capitalism's decadence varies between different groups while left communist organizations like the International Communist Current hold a basically Luxemburgist analysis that makes an emphasis on the world market and its expansion, others hold views more in line with those of Vladimir Lenin, Nikolai Bukharin and most importantly Henryk Grossman and Paul Mattick with an emphasis on monopolies and the falling rate of profit.