The Twilight of Capitalism by Michael Harrington (Part I: The New Karl Marx, Chapter 1)

This book is set in the mid-1970s during recessions and oil shocks, recently following the fall of Nixon but before the rise of Carter and Reagan. In Part II of the book, Harrington shows how Marxist theory can help understand what was going on and what may be done about it.  We know from hindsight that few were interested in such a contribution, although the coming years showed how wrong the Supply Side Austrian Model was and how right Keynes and Marx were, but more about that in the conclusion of this review.  The first part of the book was designed to recapitulate exactly what Marx meant (sounds like a title for Garry Wills to take on), despite the comments of his detractors and his supporters, and even Marx himself.

This book is not an easy read. There are a great many discussions in the first part that are essentially inside baseball involving scholars who are not generally known outside those who comment on Marx, both for and against. I will not detail each argument nor summarize each section of each of the nine chapters (OK, I lied), nor will I endeavor to examine what is said in Marx’s Capital (aka Das Kapital), which is in three volumes with multiple chapters and sections with a huge number of sources. It is not a polemic, but rather is a deep study of industrial capitalism and its history that deserves to be more widely read and studied for its value to both economics and industrial engineering.

Harrington is correct that it applies to the questions of the day. Indeed, a reading of the introduction alone brings to mind our current debate over trade and outsourcing.  Not much has changed in almost 150 years of mercantile capitalism. A true study of Capital could not be done in one book review. To do it justice would take a review of each part within each volume, if not each chapter. It is easier just to read the volumes, just as it is easier to read Harrington’s book that to try to do a full summary.

This essay is more summary than review, but it includes nuggets I find interesting and the addition of some further thoughts from the perspective of forty years later, where unexpected events have occurred and different forms of analysis have emerged, namely the  Grid-Group Theory of Douglas and Wildavsky, as well as a new focus on cooperative economics among Marxians.

Harrington starts out distinguishing the Marxism we know from Marxist Philosophy. That he still uses the word is a way to mark Marxist territory, but to avoid confusion I will call Marxist Marxian Philosophy instead.  It is not about a collection of facts but a frame of reference or paradigm. John Donne started the movement to do this, which was completed by Nietzsche, whose comment on the death of God had more to do with the death of ideal types.  Weber was also value free and Marx shares his “functional rationality.”

Marx created a new frame, noting the “systematic bias” of fact, which Einstein agreed with in that our system of reality is dependent on our frame of reference, at Thomas Kuhn noted when he applied this philosophy to scientific paradigms.  Such a past paradigm shift is how oxygen was discovered to be an element rather than a different kind of air.

Engels first noted that which became the Marxian frame of reference, that Capitalists extracted unpaid labor from their workers for their own profit.  This evolved into a new set of natural laws to analyze economics and society, primarily through understanding Capitalism.  Adding flesh to Socialism is still much needed and is now the focus of much Marxian thought, including my own.  See my work and the work of Alperovitz and Wolff for further details.

The next section is on Hegel, to avoid turning this into a dissertation, I will simply note that Marx is Hegelian in some respects and not others. An interesting point of departure is Marxian atheism and Hegel’s Theodicy, the latter of which has nothing to do with how God really is, but the idea of God throughout history. Daniel C. Dennett has perfected that analysis.

Those of us who are believers (recall that this essay is first posted on a Christian Left blog) concede the point. How God may or may not actually be cannot be known in the present life, only in the next (if there is such a thing). I will leave the rest of Chapter One for the reader to mine, including all the references to various other economists and how they relate to Marx.  Read it if you need help falling asleep. It is not easy if the names are unfamiliar.