Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Irfan Habib & why Marxist historiography is shite.

How utterly ignorant of history does an Indian historian need to be? Judging by the case of Irfan Habib- very fucking ignorant indeed. In particular, the Indian historian needs to be incapable of understanding any and every economic phenomena or commercial process. This is why they are attracted to Marxism. The fact is for productivity to rise, classes have to cooperate. Class struggle is a recipe for stagnation if not conquest and subjugation.

Habib writes-

FOR all students of modern Indian history, the colonialization of the Indian economy under British rule must remain a theme of overriding importance.

Territory is colonized. The economy is not. Habib is saying that what is of overriding importance to his ilk is something which simply can't happen.  On the other hand, merchants based in City States were financing colonial projects three thousand years ago. Habib may have heard of the Phoenicians. However, it was the Venetians who pioneered modern capitalism and its Stato da Mar.

Some places- e.g. sugar growing Caribbean islands to which slaves were brought- may be said to have a colonial or extractive economy. However, India, by and large, does not fit that picture though one might point to tea plantations in Assam or indigo grown in Bihar. But these developments occurred after paramountcy was established. It did not motivate it. 

Here was the first,

not the first. The cash strapped Portuguese Crown had started selling its monopoly on the India trade to private parties on an annual basis from 1578 onward. Previously, free trade had been attempted but Portuguese investors were not enthuse. Later, the Portuguese tried to set up a East India Company on the model of that of the English and the Dutch. This too failed. My point is that what was happening had to do with English people being English, not Portuguese. The outcome would have been the same if the India trade had remained a Crown monopoly.  

the classic capitalist power

A classic capitalist power depends entirely on capital markets not on the whims of the Crown.  

creating, and transforming, the largest colony in the world.

Because the English were English, not because they were Capitalist. Holland was ahead in that respect. England prevailed because the English were less horny and prone to drunkenness. 

Marx was greatly interested in this phenomenon, and called attention to the roles of India as a source of primary accumulation of capital and as a market for the industries of the colonizing power.

Marx had shit for brains. He didn't get that the reason he and Engels were living in England was because the English were just better people than the Germans. Still, it is a fact that people whose profession it is to hate Capitalism prefer to do their hating in Capitalist countries.  

He studied, too, the destructive and the regenerative effects of British rule upon the Indian economy.

He read about it. To study it, he'd have had to go to India. Also he would have needed to understand how making money works. 

Since then, and especially since R C Dutt's splendid two volumes of Economic Hisfory at the beginning of the century, much has been written on the subject.

Rubbish has been written. Economics is about productivity. English administrators, judges, merchants, soldiers but most particularly their sailors, were highly productive. Indian princes couldn't be very productive because their brothers or nephews kept trying to stab them and also harems don't fuck themselves. 

Still, it must be said, the Indians did a great job making England's rule in India far less mutually profitable than was possible.  

Monographs on the various regions and on individual aspects of economy and administration during the period have naturally multiplied.

Because stupid people need to produce stupid shite to teach yet more stupid people.  

There is, indeed, now a danger that the major strands may be overshadowed by the minutiae that detailed research always turns up.

The major strand involves looking at why the Brits were more productive than their Indian counterparts. This meant that a district administered by a Brit yielded far less profit to him than an equally well administered district under native rule. This is because other Brits (and natives) weren't trying to kill the ICS officer or to steal the gold he had hoarded through all manners of extortion. Less risk and better cooperation and esprit de corps translates into higher productivity.  

A recent debate did much to focus interest back on some of the important issues of the main theme; and this paper is written with the same intention. An attempt is here made to offer (or, mostly, restate) a number of propositions about the process of colonialization of the Indian economy from 1757 to about 1900.

There was a process of establishing rule over the sub-continent. There was no 'colonization of the economy' or the bodies and minds of Indian people. On the other hand, it is true that Viceroy Sahib was personally involved in the incessant sodomization of the Indian peasants and workers. 

The primary method of' surplus-extraction throughout India had come to be the levy of land revenue on behalf of or, in. the name of, the Sovereign Ruler.

This was the primary method of paying for defence, law & order, and other such local public goods in all territory that had a government. 

This institution had come about not by "immemorial usage",

yes it had in every territory which had a government. How else does Habib think magistrates and militias were paid for?  

as British administrators were inclined to think, but as the result of a historical process which can be studied and which would appear to belie the theory of unchangeableness of pre-colonial societies.

in other words, it belies Marxist stupidity. The plain fact is Governance is costly. It uses up scarce resources. The territory must provide those resources unless it has strategic value or the ruler is stupid.  

Whatever its origins, it was now a cardinal principle of the Indian agrarian system, that land revenue should embrace the bulk of the surplus above the peasant's needs of subsistence.

No. This 'cardinal principle' exists only in this nutter's head. The plain fact is the peasant's standard of living depended on his productivity. At the margin this was below subsistence which is why there was exit- i.e. some peasants starved or quit being peasants. However, for Malthusian reasons the supply of labour tended to increase if Governance wasn't utterly shit. 

Pre-colonial Economy The way in which the claims to land revenue were assigned, that is, how this share of the surplus was distributed among members of the ruling class (by way of jagir as in the Mughal Empire) defined the basic elements of polity.

No. It was possible to extract revenue from some expanses of land. In others it was impossible. Much depended on who was doing the extraction and what they offered in exchange. Habib lives in a fairy tale word where some feudal bastard adopts a 'cardinal principle' such that the peasants are reduced to bare subsistence because they are too fucking stupid to run away. Then come the Capitalist and the peasants are sodomized incessantly by Viceroy Sahib as they perish miserably of hunger.  

Upon the expenditure of this vast surplus by the ruling class was based the urban economy of pre-colonial India, with its large craft production, large volume of long-distance trade and a considerable development of commercial capital.

Nope. India exported hand loom textiles. That's what made it worthwhile for Persian poet/administrators and Afghan soldiers of fortune, and then Armenian and European merchants to turn up. Some made their money and returned home. However, for Persians, Uzbegs, Afghans etc. home may not have been worth returning to. For the English, however, it was eminently so.  

Subordinate to the land revenue, and nominally forming a part of it, was a share in the surplus that went to a heterogeneous hereditary or semi-hereditary class of superior-right-holders over the land, to whom the Mughal clerks gave the convenient designation, zamindars.

Zamindars existed even where there were no Mughal clerks. If a magnate paid tribute and could be replaced relatively cheaply, he was to a lesser or greater extent a tax-farmer. If not, he was a Sovereign. This had been the case since time immemorial. 

Their nominal share varied from one-tenth of the land revenue in northern India and Bengal to one-fourth in Gujarat.

Some land was taxed. Some wasn't. Speaking generally, the writ of law ran to a greater extent in the former but not the latter territory. Habib thinks 'cardinal principles' can make a territory homogenous. But economics doesn't work that way.  

It might actually have amounted to more than these shares, but the recorded sale prices of zamindari rights suggest that the income expected from them was always very small compared to the land revenue paid on the same land.

Tax farmers take a commission. The real money was in the additional cesses (adwabs) they levied. This could lead them to sponsor and protect cottage industries, long distance trade, banking and other activities. But this was the case everywhere in the world. Food surpluses are fed to livestock and artisans who produce high vale to weight products which in turn make long distance trade profitable. Habib has no understanding of economic history. That's why he was a Marxist. 

One should remind oneself that cash nexus (payment of land revenue in cash by peasants) was quite general in India;

where there was a class of arbitrageurs- sure. But if they ran away or if trade routes were disrupted, people went back to barter or, in the villages, a traditional division of the harvest. Incidentally, the guys who do the harvesting, even now, get one ninth of the produce. There were similar deductions for other groups who provided essential services. Thus to say 'the Ruler took half the produce' is misleading. Moreover, there were good years and bad years. What was important was that the food surplus was turned into high value to weight commodities or finished goods. Economic decline was associated with falling productivity and innovation in this area. This could create a negative feedback loop whereby the opportunity cost of agricultural labour fell with the result that there was increased involution and thus, on average, stagnant or declining productivity.  

and that sales of zamindari; were quite common. 

Why? Precisely because of 'value discrepancy'- i.e. some other guy can get more out of the place by encouraging a particular local industry. That's why the EIC bought zamindaris when they first came to Bengal. Habib, being a Marxist, doesn't understand that in econ, only productivity matters and that productivity depends on working with trustworthy, efficient, people rather than worrying about who is going to stab you before your son or nephew manages to do so.  

Habib goes on to describe land tenure in India. He doesn't get that it wasn't that different from what obtained in Europe. There, as in India, the agriculture sector represented a constraint rather than a driver of growth. Manufacturing and Services (e.g. going in a ship to India and administering a District there) were what mattered. But there were economies of scope and scale and 'endogenous' factors to do with technological innovation and 'external economies' or 'network effects' with respect to which e the Indians, by and large, were bound to fall behind. On the other hand, they could get behind any totally crazy economic ideology- Gandhi-giri, Marxism, etc. 

This was the kind of economy

i.e. agrarian.  Did you know Brits came to India because they wanted to eat mangoes and coconuts? It wasn't the case that having the monopoly on bringing in Indian textiles, spices, etc. into England (a rich country) wasn't highly lucrative. 

of which the English became masters in Bengal and southern India during the decade and a half following the middle of the eighteenth century. They stepped into the shoes of the sovereign power by virtue of

beating the fuck out of Indian armies because they tended to be shit. 

acquisition of diwani (i.e. right to collect tax) in Bengal

the soon had to take over 'nizami' (administration) because Indians were shit at it.  

and jagirs in the Northern Circars and elsewhere. The legal forms which concealed these conquests

did you know that Governor General used to conceal his white skin and red whiskers behind a firman or the Emperor? Still, Habib is making a good point. When bailiffs appear and kick you out of your house they conceal what they are doing under the 'legal form' of a 'repossession order'. That's why a lot of homeless dudes don't know they are sleeping in the street. They think they are sleeping in their beds back in the house they own. I tell you these capitalists are very cunning! They are concealing the fact that they have lots of money by using the legal form of owning lots of property and having plenty of money in the bank. 

are not material except in so far as they provided rationalization for the main acquisition, the power to levy and collect land revenue and other taxes.

The Brits saw they could provide a better service for a cheaper price which is why it was worth spending some money acquiring particular territories. But this is what smart peeps do when they buy any type of property. I suppose what Habib means is 'the Brits said they came to rule over India because they wanted to wipe the bum of every Indian and to give them lots of cuddles, kisses and chocolates.' Kali Marx showed this was all a lie! The fuckers wanted to do well economically! Human beings should not have any such desire. They should protest against Scarcity till it takes the hint and fucks off. Then everybody will be rich.  

The East India Company, which obtained this power, was controlled by the great merchant-capitalists of the City of London.

When they started off, they weren't so great. There were plenty of richer merchants in India and China. But, they could do even better by working with the Brits though, since the Brits were just better at everything, obviously the fell behind in relative terms.  

These merchants had so far conducted a trade, based on the import of Indian piecegoods (muslin, calico, chintz), silk, indigo and spices, that was financed mainly by the export of treasure.

Gained from other types of overseas trade.  

Now, suddenly, they found in their conquests the ultimate bliss that every merchant dreams of: to be able to buy without having to pay, and yet be able to sell at the full price.

Indians started giving them stuff for free. It wasn't true that EIC had to provide those Indians with defence, law & order and so forth. Also, when the agent of the Company bought grain or horses or whatever and handed over some cash to an Indian, he hit the Indian dude on the head and stole back that money. My question is, why did John Company not sodomize the Indian while robbing him? Were they homophobic? 

Perhaps Habib thought that the Indian peasant handed over half their harvest to John Company who then took it to Engyland and sold it for the full price. Probably because Mughals changed their 'cardinal principle' to 'be utterly shit'. If only the Dalits had made it their cardinal principle to get Europe to send them lots of 'treasure', Dalits would have become very rich.  

This could be achieved by treating the entire revenues of the country as gross profits.

No it couldn't. John Company employed guys who were good at accountancy. They did not employ retarded Marxist nutters. Gross profit means Total Revenue minus total cost. Net profit has to take into account depreciation etc.  

From these the expenses necessary for maintaining government and army, and law and order-the costs of maintenance of the existing system of exploitation- had to be deducted in order to yield the net profits.

Which, as a percentage wasn't very much but, overall, this tended to fall relative to what it had been. Why? Risk fell because the Whites weren't constantly knifing each other or fucking vast harems of women. They were more productive. That's why India retained the British system of administration, justice, politics etc. Sadly, they tend to be much worse than what you find in England. 

These could, in turn, be invested for the purchase of Indian comnrodities, the so called 'investments'.

The Brits provided services to the Indians and got paid for it. They bought stuff with that money and sent that stuff to some other market where it could be sold more profitably. Rather than return with an empty ship, they would buy stuff from that place and sell it somewhere else. That's how trading companies work. Since the Brits were great sailors, a lot of the trade was carried in British ships. This also meant that British shipping brokers and insurers and merchant banks got a piece of the pie.  

The purchase of these colmmodities in conditions where the buyer had a monopoly and their sale in markets through-out, the world, further enlarged the profits before the 'tribute'--a word freely in use for it at the time-was finally received in England.

India, China, etc. had a system of tribute long before England itself had any such thing. But the Brits didn't have the monopsony (i.e. single buyer) on any commodity produced in India. Even with opium, the Princely States competed with the directly controlled opium growing districts. 

The revenues from the conquests dwarfed the amounts of bullion that had once financed English trade; and, accordingly, the exports of Indian commnodities underwent an enormous increase.

In other words, the Brits didn't loot India. They boosted its economic growth by finding lucrative export markets for its produce. Sadly, most Indians didn't want to become more productive. Some did- e.g. the Parsis or, initially, some of the Bengali bhadralok. They did very well indeed.  

British imports originating in 'East India' increased from -f 1.5 million ir 1750-51 to f 5.8 million in 1797-98, fromn 12 per cent of total British imports to 24 per cent. In contrast, the British exports to East India rose only from 6.4 per cent to 9 per cent of total British exports. 

But its exports of 'invisibles' increased. Providing governance to a foreign country is an 'invisible' export. The question is why Indians were so utterly shitty that a bunch of foreigners from a distant land proved to be superior rulers. The answer has to do with productivity. Worrying your son might knife you or feeling exhausted after fucking a large harem tends to reduce productivity.  

Unlike the later impcrialists, fighting for markets in the colonies,

A Marxist fairy-tale. Who the fuck wants an 'export market' in shithole countries where folk have scarcely a couple of cowrie shells to rub together? The fact is you can export stuff easily enough if you provide easy credit. The problem is collecting the debt.  

these pre-industrial conquerors were hunting for colonial commodities, which had the whole world as their market.

Nope. These guys were traders. They found they could run certain territories profitably. But they also had to hang on to some unprofitable territory for strategic reasons. Don't forget, the first 'World War' was between the English and the French in the eighteenth century. Capturing an island or a port on the Pacific or Indian Ocean could make a difference to the eventual outcome. 

Turning to the topic of Habib's own research, we find a fundamental error. Habib does not understand that all land-owners in England, America, etc. have to pay a property tax. Moreover, there may be restrictions on how much they may raise rents though, if they take over cultivation, this may not restrict their ability to raise their profits by investing in their property

Permanent Settlemlent, 1793 The source of the conquerors' profits, however, lay not in commerce, but in land revenue.

There was booty. There was loot. And there was also a profit on tax farming (Diwani) though this necessitated taking over the administration (Nizami) because the Indian administrators were shit. This was a profit on the supply of a service- viz. governance- but the Company did not become Sovereign. It remained a subject of the British King while also pretending to be an agent of the soi disant Mughal Emperor.  

Maximization of land revenue was necessary for the maximization of profits.

No. Maximizing land revenue would have cost too much. There are diminishing returns to extorting money out of the peasants and artisans and so forth. This is one reason many Indian ruled states were poorer and more horrible than the British administered areas.  

It was this that led to the unrelenting pressure upon the zamindars in Bengal and to the system of temporary revenue-farms auctioned to the highest bidders.

It was the opposite. Profit maximization means not maximizing land revenue. Moreover, profits have to be sustainable to have a capital value. John Company was not a profit or revenue maximiser. It was a satisficer seeking Capital Gains by increasing sustainability of revenue streams. It was by no means perfect but it was better than any rival. But a lot of this had to do with the Brits simply being better and thus more productive than others.  

The actual collection of revenue from the 'diwani lands' in Bengal was pushed up from Rs 64.5 lakhs in 1762-3, under the Nizamat, to Rs 147.0 lakhs in 1765-6, the first year of the Company's diwani' .

Diwani was taken in 1765, Tax was raised to squeeze out the less efficient intermediaries. This meant the state would be stronger. People need no longer fear Maratha raids or the depredations of the Sanyassis. Habib does not understand that if the Government has more money it can defend its territory and thus people are more secure. They need only pay the Government not the Government and the Bandit and the Invader. Still, Diwani wasn't enough. The Brits needed to take over the Nizamat (administration) because the Indians were stupid, corrupt, lazy and so utterly shit they slit their own throats repeatedly.  

And, according to another set of figures, the revenues of Bengal increased from Rs 2.26 crores, in 1765-6 to Rs 3.7 crores in 1778-9. 

Which is why Bengal ceased to be preyed upon. Naturally, Bengalis resented this. They are still very angry with Churchill for refusing to let Japan conquer their province.  

Such was the pressure that a famine which in 1769-70 carried off a third, of the cultivators of Bengal, caused no decline in revenue assessments.

Why the fuck would a famine cause revenue to fall? It would only be in subsequent years that real wages would rise and rents and profits would get squeezed.  

This tremendous pressure upon revenuepayers, peasants as well as zamindars, could not but create a crisis in Bengal; and it is this crisis that forms the background to the controversy among the English administrators, preceding the Permanent Settlement.

If the Brits had been lazy cunts, they'd have kept the Indian administration and gradually become as corrupt as the people they lived amongst. Indeed, this was the allegation guys like Burke and Sheridan were making back in Blighty. 

One group, represented by James Grant. argued that the land revenue could yet be considerably increased.20 The other, of which Cornwallis became the spokesman, saw that the terrifying results of the tribute so far extorted left no alternative, but to offer a compromise to the zamindars, whereby the Company might be protected against ta fall in its revenues, by resigning claims to any increase in land revenue beyond a figure now to be finally settled.

A.O Hume, the guy who set up the INC, understood that the Permanent Settlement had to go and taxes had to increase for Bengal to rise or, indeed, maintain its relative position. He thought English speaking Indians would be smart enough to understand this. Boy, was he wrong! What Indians like is corrupt dynasts with shit for brains.  

Still the Permanent Settlement created a class of loyal Hindu landlords. Ram Mohan Roy and Dwarkanath Tagore spent their own money to set up newspapers and to visit England to lobby for unrestricted European migration to India and an expansionary policy. Why? They knew only Whitey could protect them from the dagger of the Muslims. As for the Hindus or Sunnis of Awadh, they weren't too thrilled that the Nawab kept sending vast sums to Kerbala and Najaf. The plain fact is, the Brits wanted to expand the economy not waste money on their harem or getting into Heaven. This meant they had an incentive to provide good governance. Suddenly, India was off limits for invaders from across the Hindu Kush. By and by, the Pindari and the Thug and the endless wars of Princes came to an end. True, Indians still didn't want to do smart things. Still, and increasing number of them enjoyed a previously unexampled freedom of religion and security of person and property. Suddenly, stabbing your daddy or your uncle wasn't the usual method of inheriting property. John Company brought the steam powered mill, the railways, the electric telegraph and new cash crops like jute and indigo to India. Some Indians got very rich through commerce. Others rose in the Sciences and the learned professions. Finally, the Brits introduced representative government. Had the Indians not been stupid and lazy, the country could have become self-administering and self-garrisoning by the time India was admitted to the League of Nations. 

There is a theory that rich people only became rich by stealing from the poor. Look at Elon Musk. He has stolen money from every person who owns a Tesla. Some foolish people say that Musk gives them a car in exchange for their money. This is foolish. Did Musk create the atoms and molecules from which his cars are composed? No! It was the poor people who did that! As Kali Maa'rks said 'fart of nice proletarian caused Big Bang. Mind it kindly!' 

Colonial Base for Industrial Revolution At the cost of a short digression, a word on the role of the Indian tribute in the economy of England would not be out of order.

Why did Indian tribute to the Grand Moghul or the Peshwa or whatever not create the base for an industrial revolution? Was it because fart of the Indian proletarian was not causing nice nice Big Bang? I suppose so. Did you know that prior to British conquest of India, Indians were not having asshole? Viceroy's incessant sodomization of all natives caused assholes to appear on Indian anatomy. Only after that could proletarians demand the right to fart from evil IMF Neo-Liberal Washington Consensus. 

Taking the amount of the tribute to be about £4.70 million on the basis of sale prices, we find that it amounted to over 2 per cent of the British national income, estimated at C232 million for 1801."

But Britain had to send a lot of men, and ships and trade goods in order to earn that money. It also had to fight France at different locations across the globe. Meanwhile Indian Princes were fucking their harems or paying crores to get into Heaven while foreigners quietly took over more and more of the country.  

We must remember that the total rate of capital formation in Britain was probably no more than 7 per cent of the national income about this time;44 and this means that, at this crucial stage of the Industrial Revolution, India was furnishing an amount that was almost 30 per cent of the total national saving transformed into capital.

But, by this reckoning, the West Indies were supplying 120 percent of Britain's national saving because their trade with UK was about four times as great. What should be borne in mind is that British people invested money in factories instead of getting a larger harem or sending money to Jerusalem so as to buy a place in Heaven.  

The neglect of this factor in discussions of capital formation in England during this period is surprising.

Unless one knows- as a lot of Brits do- how that capital formation took place. Britain had a lot of high quality coal and found a way to use coal to provide steam power. Its people worked hard and the productivity gap between them and Indians steadily widened. But the 'great divergence' probably dated back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.  

One would certainly have to assume a complete immobility of capital to suggest that this enormous accession of wealth in the hands of London merchants and nobobs did not directly or indirectly channel or divert capital into industry to any significant degree whatsoever.

Guys who knew about oceanic trade in commodities invested in that. Guys who knew about coal and steam power invested in that. One reason the Brits were doing a lot of investing is that they were kicking the ass of the French. As the Royal Navy's strength grew, the people no longer needed to fear an invasion.  

By 1800, England was on the threshold of completing the conquest of the cotton textile industry by the machine. During the next thirty years the extension of the machine to most other sectors was to be similarly accomplished, culminating in the construction of railways, a sector that was to dominate British economy during the 1830s and 1840s.

Indians played zero role in this. However, one reason Britain industrialized first is because of its pre-eminence in maritime matters. Commodities from all over the globe could be brought to the UK and used to produce high value added goods which could then be sent in the same ships to any part of the world.  

The need for capital not only continued, but increased.

What was increasing yet faster was the appetite of the British saver for shares in commercial enterprises. This is one reason British capital displaced Indian capital in the financing of the expansion of the Raj. But Indian capital could find a profitable outlet in an interior which Pax Britannica had made more secure.  

The annual rate of capital formation as a proportion of national income was maintained at about 7 per cent until 1830, whereafter it accelerated to reach 9 or 10 per cent.

Because of the railway boom. Productivity was rising as never before. As rates of return rise, people save and invest more.  

This capital could not yet entirely be generated by 'capitalist circulation', and needed continuing primary accumulation. As against the rate of 9 per cent of national income for total capital formation reached during 1821-31 to 1831-61, net domestic capital formation accounted for only 7.4 per cent of the national income. This meant that the pressure for tribute could not be relaxed.

If rich people want to get richer by saving and investing more this means the pressure on them to rob poor people increases. Did you know, when you put your money into Tesla shares, you will be under pressure to rob me. But, what is to stop you raping me while you rob me? Indeed, if you are evil enough to rob and rape a person just because that person is poor, you are bound to feel pressurised into decapitating me and shitting down my neck. That's just rude. Shame on you!

One might say, Habib was telling stupid lies for a political purpose. But what was that purpose? 

To sum up, it was during the second half of the nineteenth century that the modern Indian landlord was created and an alliance formed simultaneously between him and imperialism. 

This is nonsense. There was no difference between the earlier and later type of landlord. Moreover, in one third of the territory of India, there were landlords who were indistinguishable from their counterparts in British controlled territory. But, an Indian zamindar who married his daughter to a Nepali landlord would not consider that there was any great difference between them even though the Nepali had no 'allegiance' to 'Imperialism'. 

I suppose, Habib is saying 'boo to landlords! boo to kulaks! They are lickspittles of the King Emperor!' But why bother? Habib was 16 when India became independent. If you are going to tell a stupid lie, why not make it a relevant lie? Why not say 'Indian kulak is Zionist agent. Did you know Disraeli make Queen Victoria the Empress of India. Disraeli was Jewish. He secretly made alliance with the ancestors of all the kulaks you see around you today. Let us jihad their sorry asses!' 

Empires can protect minorities and keep contiguous territories with different religious majorities together. The Moghuls under Akbar and the Brits almost to the very end of their hegemony managed this. Habib does not understand that the end of Imperialism entailed Partition. Land reform could have happened under the Brits and, to some extent, did happen in Bengal after 1937. But it was no panacea. What was important was that productivity rise. 

British Imperialism's 'junior ally' was the Princes and the very big landlords who were not modern at all. Yet Habib writes-

The irreconcilable contradictions that emerged between imperialism and its junior ally, the landlords, on the one hand, and the bulk of the Indian people, including the bourgeoisie, the working class and the peasantry, on the other, laid the seeds of the struggle for national liberation.

The bourgeoisie- e.g. Jamnalal Bajaj or even Motilal Nehru- had sizable land holdings. They had no bone to pick with the zamindars. Nor did the 'industrial proletariat' who no longer had any connection with agriculture. As for 'national liberation', Mangal Pandey wanted it as did various landlords.  

The whole epoch that followed, spanning the first half of this century and ending with the withdrawal of British imperialism and the parting of the ways of the Indian bourgeoisie and the proletariat,

Previously, bourgeoisie was constantly sucking off proletariat. Peasants would get in on the action by sodomizing the bourgeoisie and giving it a reach-around. Sadly, once the Brits left, they became distant from each other.. Still, their wives were pleased.  

constituted the fourth and final stage of colonialism in India.

rule of Nehru dynasty? Habib could have little guessed it would be helmed, twenty years after he wrote this, by the daughter of an Italian Fascist.  

But it would undoubtedly need a revolution in India before the vestiges and survivals of colonialization are altogether removed.

Indira Gandhi showed that the State her dad inherited could slaughter Commies with vim and vigour. It could take a tougher line on Gandhians. When she returned to power, Buta Singh put the boot into the Gandhi Peace Foundation. Habib, who is still alive, learned nothing and forgot nothing. I suppose he is now cheering Chandrachud for restoring the minority status of his beloved Aligarh Muslim University. Nice guy, but maybe he'd have been less useless if he had understood that 'tijarat', commerce, is the foundation of 'imarat', that which it is worth building up. Prophet Muhammad was himself a merchant and Islam promoted commercial activity and economic development. It raised productivity. Marxism didn't. It created famine and lowered the material standard of living of the industrial proletariat. That was the history, this silly man should have learned. 

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

The moral status of Lori Gruen & marrying goats

The moral status of a living, inanimate, or wholly imaginary thing is merely a matter of ipse dixit assertion or stipulation made for a particular purpose. It is important because it gives an indication of how a class of objects is likely to be treated by those who make or who are bound by the assertion. 

Thus, the puppy is punished when it is bad just as Daddy is punished if he snatches and tries to eat the last of the chocolate eclairs. But imaginary or incompossible things- e.g. vampires (unless they have a soul because of a Gypsy's curse)- may have a moral status for a particular purpose. The 'intension' of 'moral status' has a well defined 'extension' for that particular purpose though, no doubt, the purpose can change, or the knowledge base can change, and so the extension changes as well. Thus, for Buffy, Vampires are bad. She must slay them. The exception is Angel, the vampire with a soul, because he isn't really a vampire. But, once Spike gets 'chipped' and can no longer attack humans, he can become one of the good guys if he serves the purposes of the Scoobies. 

We understand all this by the time we are old enough to read Harry Potter or watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Lori Gruen, by employing cascading intensional fallacies, can write utter shite by ignoring this 'common knowledge' of ours

This is from her article in the Stanford Encylopaedia

The Moral Status of Animals
First published Tue Jul 1, 2003; substantive revision Mon Aug 12, 2024


Is there something distinctive about humanity that justifies the idea that humans have moral status while non-humans do not?

No. We say- 'this wine is bad. Pour it away' or 'this computer is fucking evil, mate. I'm going to take a fucking hammer to it.' If the boss makes a remark of this sort, you are careful to never buy bad wine or evil computers. Only a bad human would do so. You want to be a good human.  

Providing an answer to this question has become increasingly important among philosophers as well as those outside of philosophy who are interested in our treatment of non-human animals.

The answer is obvious. If I dislike something and want others to dislike it, I seek to give it an 'intersubjective' moral status as 'bad' or 'uncool' or the fucking moral equivalent of Hitler's genocide or Israel's treatment of cuddly terrorists from Hamas.  

For some, answering this question will enable us to better understand the nature of human beings and the proper scope of our moral obligations.

Human beings don't need a better understanding of this sort just as cats don't need to better understand what it is to be a cat. Chairs, on the other hand, would benefit from Doctoral research programs into why the Chair of the Department is so utterly shite.  

Some argue that there is an answer that can distinguish humans from the rest of the natural world.

Those who do so find it difficult to distinguish between their Mummy and a marmot. Clearly, we must provide such feeble minded people with safe spaces on Ivy League campuses where they can speculate on why it was that Karl Marx failed to distinguish between Mums and marmosets- unless, he actually did so and a properly Lacanian reading of the Grundrisse can clarify our reception of Marsupial Third Wave Feminism which, as Vagina Dentata Choothopadhyaya has noted, throws the Barbie to the Shrimp God. It is a direct consequence of epistemic failure in this regard that so many honky ho-bags voted for Trump instead of Kamala. 

Many of those who accept this answer are interested in justifying certain human practices towards non-humans—practices that cause pain, discomfort, suffering, and death.

They could be equally interested in justifying certain human practices to rocks, trees, planets, stars as well as imaginary or incompossible objects like flying unicorns.

The fact that many people are mad and prone to eat their own shit doesn't mean that Universities should grant tenure to cretins who 'justify' these practices. 

It is not the case that philosophy has a 'moral status' as something good or bad. It is merely stupid and useless. 

The fact is, it is utility itself which makes it useful to attribute 'moral status' to a class of objects. It is useful to say there is 'good' mathematics and 'bad' mathematics. But Philosophy is merely stupid and useless. 

This latter group

who have shit for brains because they think 'justifying' stuff matters in any context other than a court of justice or that of a protocol based enterprise or institution. But even then, the thing depends on the incentive matrix which itself arises out of utilitarian mechanism design. It is mere sophistry- i.e. rhetoric- to speak of a thing as indefeasible when it is eminently so. You may as well believe in claims that hookers will love you long time. 

expects that in answering the question in a particular way, humans will be justified

to whom? God? It is said that 12 just men- the lamed wufnik- justify the continued existence of Humanity to Jehovah. But they don't know each other or, indeed, what their own role is.  

in granting moral consideration to other humans that is neither required nor justified when considering non-human animals.

If these boring shitheads granted any moral consideration to us, they'd fucking kill themselves. The plain fact is, you don't need University Departments to indoctrinate crazy nuisances. They arise spontaneously. The plain fact is it is immoral to eat anything other than your own shit. Even rock salt has feelings. How would you like it if you were ground up and then used to coat the rim of a Margarita glass? 

In contrast to this view, an increasing number of philosophers have argued that while humans are different in a variety of ways from each other and other animals, these differences do not provide a philosophical defense for denying non-human animals moral consideration.

Why is Zelensky not providing a philosophical defence for his country? Why is he using guns and bullets to expel the invader and recover Ukrainian territory? 

What the basis of moral consideration is and what it amounts to has been the source of much disagreement.

Amongst morons. The plain fact is that you can show great deference and respect to your chair or to a cockroach or to anything else. There can be umpteen philosophical or theological or aesthetic defences for doing so. But you may still be as mad as a hatter.  


1. The Moral Considerability of Animals

To say that a being deserves moral consideration is to say

anything at all depending on the context and the intention of the speaker. Thus when somebody asks me to return money I borrowed from them, I say 'all beings- more particularly such flamingos as may be found at Lake Nakuru and which evince a desire to enter Punjabi politics as members of the Aaam Admi Party- deserve not just our moral consideration but also the donation of a crate of Jameson being delivered to me as a matter of urgency.' This statement of mine done not mean

that there is a moral claim that this being can make on those who can recognize such claims.

On the contrary, it only means that claims- even in law- may be utterly silly and inconsequential and yet stir up shitheads to furious debate.  

A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged.

I like my chair. It has served me faithfully, these many years. I feel it is wronged when you sit on it- you big fatty, you.  

It is often thought that because only humans can recognize moral claims, it is only humans who are morally considerable.

Babies and lunatics are 'morally considerable'. But so are our dogs and cats and cattle and certain chattels- like my favourite chair.  

However, when we ask why we think human animals are the only types of beings that can be morally wronged,

we don't think any such thing. I can't morally wrong Mother Theresa even if I call her a whore or rape or kill her. No act of mine can touch her. You may say, 'The Pope could have morally wronged her by falsely accusing her of disobedience or lack of chastity.' But, this is not actually the case. The Pope would have done wrong but he lacked the capacity to morally or otherwise wrong Mother Theresa. Even if I believed that Christianity is a false religion and that the True God has consigned her to the depths of Hell, I can't say she has been wronged. All I can say is that I think the outcome unfair.

we begin to see that the class of beings able to recognize moral claims and the class of beings who can suffer moral wrongs are not co-extensive. A variety of types of morally relevant factors have been invoked to to justify who is morally considerable.

Which is like deciding who is worthy of being included in the telephone directory. The plain fact is I can get a phone for my cat or my chair and then they will have to be included in the directory. 

1.1 Speciesism

The view that only humans should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as “speciesism”.

Whereas the view that only chairs should be morally considered is sometimes referred to as equally stupid.  

In the 1970s, Richard Ryder coined this term while campaigning in Oxford to denote a ubiquitous type of human centered prejudice, which he thought was similar to racism.

Why does my cat not have the vote? It it coz it iz bleck?  

He objected to favoring one’s own species, while exploiting or harming members of other species.

He was harming or exploiting his students. They belonged to his own species.  

Peter Singer popularized the term and focused on the way speciesism, without moral justification, favors the interests of humans:

Speciesm, like other types of stupidity, can only harm humans, not cats or chairs.  

'the racist violates the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of his own race,

That's not a racist. That's just kin selective altruism. A racist thinks guys belonging to another race are inferior or that they can be safely attacked or exploited.  

when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race.

So, Nelson Mandela was a racist because the interests of his race clashed with that of the Whites in South Africa.  

Similarly the speciesist allows the interests of his own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is the same in each case. (Singer 1974: 108)

No. The racist may not do shit for his own race , or indeed, he may actively harm it, while holding it to be superior to another race. He may have no opinion about whose interests override those of others. Indeed, few of us do. There is no point to such an exercise. 

The fact is, my interests override those of everybody else's for me. I may pretend that I greatly care about others but this is mere pretence. 

Discrimination based on race, like discrimination based on species is thought to be prejudicial, because these are not factors that matter when it comes to making moral claims.

Yes they are. Kamala Harris certainly made such claims on behalf of coloured peeps- more particularly those who have to sit down to pee. Similarly, when your typical Indian leftie says 'the dogs of the rich are fed delicious morsels of meat while us workers and peasants can't even afford daal.' Racist and Speciesist claims are common on the Left. Yet, the fact is, we think our cow or our cat is more important that some guy who wants to eat them. There is an 'uncorrelated asymmetry' which dictates a bourgeois strategy such that we protect what is our own or closer to us in 'oikeiosis' or better serves our interests. As Maynard Smith showed, bourgeois strategies are eusocial. Talking virtue signalling bollocks is useless.  


Speciesist actions and attitudes are prejudicial because there is no prima facie reason for preferring the interests of beings belonging to the species group to which one also belongs over the interests of those who don’t.

Only in the sense that there is no reason to wipe your own arse rather than go around wiping the arses of everybody else.  

That humans are considered to be members of the species Homo sapiens — humans share a genetic make-up and a distinctive physiology, we all emerge from a human pregnancy — is unimportant from the moral point of view.

Only if that point of view thinks it immoral that people don't wipe other people's arses while being scrupulous in so doing when it comes to their own arse or that of their baby.  

Species membership is morally irrelevant, a bit of luck that is no more morally interesting than being born in Malaysia or Canada.

Or the fact that your arse is attached to your body and, if you don't wipe it, will smell like shit and soil your underwear. The plain fact is, morality- notions of good and bad, virtue and vice- have evolved to serve a useful purpose- e.g. inculcating good habits, like keeping your bum clean rather than stinking up the place wherever you go.  

It thus cannot serve as the basis for a view that holds that our species deserves moral consideration that is not owed to members of other species.

Peter Singer wipes his own bum. Why does he not wipe the bum of various wallabies? Is it coz he is a Speciesist?  


As Oscar Horta (2022) and others have noted, speciesism is not only an individual attitude that some humans hold, but is a “collective phenomenon” that springs from ideological commitments that are generated within and shape institutions and social structures.

Ideological commitments are what prevents Horta from coming to wipe my bum, though he wipes his own bum and, no doubt, those of various Spanish burros.  

Since membership in a species category is largely socially determined,

Very true. Did you know that Queen Victoria elevated a giraffe to the House of Lords? True, the giraffe had previously been received in the best social circles, still, it did raise eyebrows at that time because the giraffe looked a bit Jewy. 

analyzing the meanings of category membership can help illuminate further problems with speciesism.

Nothing can illuminate the dung-heap that is the mind of these shitheads. 

The social meanings of categories structure not only the institutions we operate within but also how we conceptualize ourselves and our world.

No one knows the 'social meaning' of anything though, no doubt, they can ascribe one to whatever they like. Is the institution of marriage one which creates a Heaven, or a Hell, on Earth? Different people may have a different view, or the same people may have different views at various times.  

Humans have developed moral systems as well as a wide range of other valuable practices, and by creating these systems, we separate the human from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Very true. Our species developed moral systems and then decided it was moral to eat omelettes. This caused us to condemn hens to laying eggs. Why were they not permitted to pursue careers in Actuarial Science instead? The answer, obviously, has to do with Neo-Liberalism.  

But the category “human” itself is morally contested.

only in the sense that the practice of eating your own shit is morally contested.  

Some argue, for example, that racism is not simply, or even primarily about discrimination and prejudice, but rather a mechanism of dehumanizing blackness so as to provide the conditions that make humans white (see Fanon 1967; Jackson 2020; Kim 2015; Ko & Ko 2017).

Fanon was a soldier in the Second World War. He very well knew that White Jews had been more thoroughly 'dehumanized' by Vichy nutters than those of African heritage. Admittedly, this was because there was a notion that us darkies like plucking cotton or cutting cane in return for some nice bananas or watermelons. 

According to this line of thought, speciesism isn’t focused on discrimination or prejudice but is a central tool for creating human (and white) supremacy or exceptionalism.

Which is why, if you don't want to be thought of as a Nazi, you should marry a goat.  


Monday, 18 November 2024

Why 'reflective equilibrium' is mere magical thinking

Justice is about justiciability which is restricted and generally protocol bound. Where this is the case, there is an 'interpretation' of existing principles or rules. Interpretations are epistemic and change as the knowledge base changes. Moreover, because of impredicativity, unicity or naturality may be lacking. Finally, it should be noted, Knowledge is a disequilibrium phenomenon driven by cognitive dissonance.

Social Choice theorists and other such shitheads indulged in cascading intensional fallacies while ignoring the importance of 'interpretation' and the 'far from equilibrium' nature of knowledge systems. 

 A case in point is Rawl's reflective equilibrium which refers to 'the mutual adjustment of principles and judgments in the light of relevant argument and theory'. This just means that there is no pressure to alter either accepted principles or judgments under given circumstances. 

The problem here is that principles can be interpreted in different ways such that, ceteris paribus, the same judgment is made by different people or different judgments are made by the same person. In other words, 'reflective equilibrium' is 'anything goes'. After all, when our interpretation of a principle or a judgment changes, it is not the case that the principle or judgement has itself changed. This is because interpretations are 'epistemic' and based on our knowledge base. Neither principles, not judgments are. However, unless principles can be shown to be independent of each other, or no new principle can be shown to subsume two or more existing principles, then 'mutual adjustment' with judgments is not efficient. In other words, the process of arriving at it could be streamlined. This means, if there is 'utility' in having principles, then there is more utility in rejecting an existing cozy little 'mutual adjustment' so as to get better judgments. This is particularly important because of 'Knightian Uncertainty'. Unanticipated states of the world require principles of more general import or application. This can be seen in the evolution of case law where a particular principle is given a more general interpretation such that it subsumes certain other principles or reduces their scope such that they designate a type or category. In other words, they serve a descriptive function or are mere 'terms of art'. 

Different jurisdictions may have different principles, yet because interpretation changes as the knowledge base changes, judgments may converge. But this isn't Rawls's 'reflective equilibrium'. It is a case of different jurisdictions competing with each other for fear of falling behind economically or engendering a political or social backlash. 

Carl Knight, in an article for the Stanford Encyclopaedia, asserts

If you believe that conduct in some case is right or wrong, you have a moral judgment or intuition.

Not necessarily. Your judgment might be aesthetic, or a matter of social convention or wholly strategic or self-serving.  

Perhaps you have many such judgments about different cases. You might, nevertheless, consider that judgments alone do not justify the moral views they express.

You might nevertheless consider yourself to be a pussy cat chasing mice on the rings of Uranus.  

You and your moral interlocutors might be concerned that “what we actually accept is fraught with idiosyncrasy and vulnerable to vagaries of history and personality” (Elgin 1996: 108) or displays “irregularities and distortions” (Rawls 1971: 48).

You might also be teaching worthless shite to imbeciles. Meanwhile kids you were at skool with, who did STEM subjects, are making the world a better place. 

John Rawls proposed to address these

stupid 

concerns through the

even more stupid 

method of reflective equilibrium. We first ensure that our judgments are considered, being made in circumstances appropriate for moral deliberation.

But those circumstances may only arise by reason of some immoral or repugnant asymmetry of power or influence. 'Judge not lest ye be judged' is a sound enough maxim.  

We are then to consider general principles that might accommodate our set of considered judgments—and more than that, explain and extend them.

What better 'general principle' is there than 'judge not' ? The proper reflective equilibrium for any person who reflects upon their own inequities or relative ignorance, is one which seeks greater understanding, not more and more 'moral intuitions' which, at bottom, tend to be foolish, mischievous, or otherwise repugnant.  

On the standard wide reflective equilibrium, we are to consider

'all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one’s judgments together with all relevant philosophical arguments for them. (Rawls 1971: 49)'

'All possible descriptions' is an 'intension' whose extension is epistemic, impredicative and, because of Knightian Uncertainty, unknowable. Nobody can 'conform' with what is unknowable. This is the intensional fallacy writ large. The same holds for 'all relevant philosophical arguments'. 


This requires that we reflect on a wide range of principles, arguments, and theories.

Which is like saying 'we must conform with what we would want to conform with were we omniscient Gods. This requires us to chop off our own heads and shove those heads so far up our poopers that they reappear on top of our necks. Just keep doing this till you gain the power to create a nice new multiverse of your own.'] 

Equilibrium is reached where principles and judgments have been revised such that they agree with each other.

One could speak of Judge Hercules who achieves 'harmonious construction'. But, he is omniscient. We aren't. All we can do is make provisional judgments when we have to while recognizing that all principles are defeasible and sublatable- i.e. they will be replaced by something better as our knowledge base expands or our Structural Causal Models improve. 

In short, the method of reflective equilibrium is the mutual adjustment of principles and judgments in the light of relevant argument and theory.

But that 'relevant argument and theory' must be the one provided by smart peeps who didn't waste their time teaching or studying useless shite. Even there, the 'regret minimizing' strategy would be to hedge your bets and experiment a little at the margin. In other words, don't apply the judgment in all cases. See what happens when it isn't done.  

Reflective equilibrium is the dominant method in moral and political philosophy (McPherson 2015: 652; Anderson 2015; de Maagt 2017: 444).

Because both turned to stupid shit long ago. The great thing about the intensional fallacy is that it provides an algorithmic method to crank our more and more virtue signalling nonsense under the rubric of scholarship.  

Its advocates suggest that “it is the only rational game in town for the moral theorist” or “the only defensible method” (DePaul 1993: 6; Scanlon 2003: 149; see also Freeman 2007: 35–36; Floyd 2017: 377–378).

If you are stupid but want to teach shit, it is rational to embrace the intensional fallacy. But you can make more money teaching people how to levitate.  

Though often endorsed, it is far more frequently used. Wherever a philosopher presents principles, motivated by arguments and examples, they are likely to be using the method.

No. Nobody can use this method just as nobody can levitate. Still, one might change or 're-word' principles to make them sound less stupid or out of date. Thus instead of the sound Kantian principle that Niggers are stupid and thus we should ignore what they say, we might have a principle of epistemic eligibility such that only Niggers who repeat our brand of stupid shite are deemed worthy of listening to. 

They are adjusting their principles—and with luck, their readers’—to the judgments suggested by the arguments and examples. Alternatively they might “bite the bullet” by adjusting initially discordant judgments to accommodate otherwise appealing principles. Either way, they are usually describing a process of reflective equilibrium, with principles adjusted to judgments or vice versa.

No. They are merely making feasible adjustments. Reflective equilibrium requires infeasible adjustment of a sort which can only be made 'at the end of mathematical time'.  

Reflective equilibrium is a formal expression of standard methodological practice in moral and political philosophy. 

Which is why both have turned to shit.  

While the distinction between judgments and principles may intuitively correspond to that between the particular and the general,

[p]eople have considered judgments at all levels of generality, from those about particular situations and institutions up through broad standards and first principles to formal and abstract conditions on moral conceptions. (Rawls 1974: 8)

People have always thought that judgments should be made by judges who mention, in the 'ratio', what principle has been applied. People think that even judges, when not in court, merely have opinions or make decisions which they may or may not be able to justify by appealing to any particular principle. 

A Society is considered to be well functioning when very few people ever have to appear before a Court of Law. As for 'moral philosophers', they are merely a glorified type of child minder for young people who aren't yet mature enough to get a job and start a family. 

A first distinction is, then, that while principles necessarily generalize to more than one case (List & Valentini 2016; Slavny et al. 2021), judgments may be either general or particular.

It is perfectly possible to have a principle which applies in one and only one case. This is like the 'halacha vein morin kein' by which it was permissible for Phinehas to slay Zimri & Kosbi. However knowledge of this law forbids the very action it would otherwise dictate. As for judgments, they may simply be ineffective or futile.  

A second distinction is that judgments express an agent’s moral outlook

they may do. They may not. But anything at all may express moral outlook. I do it with farts.  

while principles are candidate representations of that outlook

That may be true of 'moral principles'. But that would be only be a small subset of one's principles. Moreover, one's moral principles may be overriden by other principles. Thus I might think it immoral to kill yet, as a member of a Jury, return a guilty verdict in a Capital case. 

What is missing from this account is the importance of 'interpretation'. Principles are interpreted in a particular way to get a particular judgment.  Why won't these shitheads admit this obvious truth?

In mathematics, interpretation is the process of giving meaning to mathematical expressions, such as symbols and formulas. The value that is assigned to an expression is called the interpretation of that expression. If there is a science of law or a 'Moral Science' then there is a deontic logic which has a mathematical representation. It is possible there is a canonical- i.e. unique and non-arbitrary (i.e. 'natural')- representation. But we know it won't be complete or include its own 'meta-language' or interpretation. Thus by the results of Godel, Tarski, Turing etc., this 'reflective equilibrium' is gibberish. 

In reflective equilibrium, judgments are the views actually held by the moral deliberator

but, speaking generally, they are inchoate. Moreover, one may change the interpretation even of one's own past judgments. Interpretation much more than principles or views or values, are essentially epistemic. They are bound to change as our knowledge base changes or our Structural Causal Models improve. Knowledge is a disequilibrium phenomenon. It is driven by cognitive dissonance. Pedants and Pundits may want to pretend otherwise. But we piss on their heads. 

while a “scheme of principles represents their moral conception and characterizes their moral sensibility” (Rawls 1974: 7; see also Rawls 1971: 48).

No such 'scheme' has ever existed any more that there has been a 'scheme' according to which the timing and smelliness of our farts has been pre-established.  

This section examines judgments, while the next considers principles.

1.1 Considered Judgments

The method of reflective equilibrium starts with judgments.

We make decisions. We have opinions. Judges make judgments. A protocol bound profession may require competent authorities to give something similar. In either case, the thing is defeasible. If a judgment is supported by a justification, then it may serve to create a 'public signal' which supports a superior Aumann correlated equilibria.  

An initial question is which of these judgments should be allowed entry to the process.

All- by Rawls's previous stipulation. If even one is left out, there is no equilibrium. 

An obvious position with some appeal is to allow any judgments or intuitions. A permissive view says that

[o]ur “intuitions” are simply opinions; our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular, some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium … If our official theories disagree with what we cannot help thinking outside the philosophy room, then no real equilibrium has been reached. (Lewis 1983: x; cf. Goodman 1965: 63–64)

Moreover, any possible intuition must be included. But many possible intuitions are currently unknowable.  

This might seem cavalier, but we are at the moment only discussing the starting point of the method. If reflective equilibrium does its job,

it can't. The thing isn't feasible. 

our initial judgments may be transformed, and will at any rate cohere with theoretical considerations.

If we knew everything we may indeed be able to 'judge as gods' but, this may involve not judging at all 

The mainstream view, by contrast, suggests that only considered judgments should be used in reflective equilibrium. These are “those judgments in which our moral capacities are least likely to be displayed without distortion” (Rawls 1971: 47).

Sadly, we know that the 'considered judgments' of our finest spiritual, moral, and judicial minds have been shit. They were creatures of a more ignorant and bigoted age. But, our kids are now old enough to say the same of us.  

We should (1) be capable of reaching the right decision (e.g., be reasonably well informed),

sadly nobody knows if they have this capability 

(2) be in circumstances where we can do so (e.g., not be scared or upset), and

You can be scared and upset and yet make the right call.  

(3) be motivated to do so (e.g., not stand to gain or lose from the results of our deliberations).

Again, motivation may not matter.  

In short, we should have the ability, opportunity, and desire to make the right decision (Rawls 1971: 48).

So, to make the right decisions we should be such that we couldn't not make the right decisions. This is a very important discovery. We can all levitate simply by being the sort of people who can't not levitate.  

In moral and political philosophy, the judgments used in reflective equilibrium are usually these Rawlsian considered judgments.

Just as, in levitation, the levitational technique used is that which ensures levitation occurs. 

I

1.2 The Confidence Constraint

Rawls proposes that “we can discard those judgments made with hesitation, or in which we have little confidence” (Rawls 1971: 47).

But that is itself a judgment. The problem with discarding it is that some very useful judgments too have to be discarded. Knowledge, as I said, is a disequilibrium phenomenon. In this case you are driven to do more research so as to have greater confidence in the 'key-stone' judgment. But, it may turn out our hesitation or lack of confidence is wrong-headed.  

In other words, considered judgments are subject to a confidence constraint. 

No. All judgments are defeasible. Confidence is irrelevant. We know in advance that it is misplaced in some particular which may or may not be very important indeed.  

Relatedly, Rawls frequently refers to considered judgments as “convictions” (e.g., Rawls 1971: 19–21, 45, 48, 53, 246, 318–320, 447, 520, 580).

Our convictions may not be 'considered' while we ourselves may not be convinced by a judgment which is useful or, indeed, vital.  

The confidence constraint extends to revisions of judgments, which must be made “with conviction and confidence” (Rawls 1974: 8). A more modest version of the confidence constraint is a compromise between the ideal of accounting for all judgments and practical limitations (Scanlon 2003: 144).

Why compromise with nonsense? Some people tend to be confident and optimistic. It is a personal trait. If you are speaking of 'confidence intervals', that is an empirical matter and relates to what can be treated as fact rather than an unsupported supposition.  

1.3 The Epistemic Constraint

Considered judgments, even those that satisfy the confidence constraint, are not limited as to their content. One might have the ability, opportunity, and desire to make the right decision, yet make a grossly mistaken decision, and be confident in it (see Sternberg [ed.] 2002). This may motivate an epistemic constraint. 

Or it may not. If it is important to make the judgment, we just do it already while admitting it may be wrong or not supported by any discoverable facts.  

A modest version would exclude judgments that are logically inconsistent or founded on empirical error.

But we may be wrong about it being logically inconsistent or based on false information.  

A more ambitious constraint excludes any unjustified or unwarranted beliefs (Kelly & McGrath 2010).

We don't know what is unwarranted. What we have are provisional beliefs. At some future point, it is likely they will be considered unjustified.  

For example, Gerald Gaus comments that “clearly unjustified beliefs are, if anything, epistemic liabilities,” approvingly quoting Quine and Ullian’s suggestion that “insofar as we are rational, we will drop a belief when we have in vain tried to find evidence for it” (Gaus 1996: 86; Quine & Ullian 1970: 16).

Not if it is useful. Plenty of people find it useful to believe in a kind and loving God.  

Friends of reflective equilibrium largely reject such a constraint. The basic complaint is that it makes epistemological determinations in advance of the reflective process where these are rather the proper upshot of that process. Reflective equilibrium can be viewed as a negative method, i.e., as what we’re left with when we decide that positive criteria for epistemic success cannot be laid out prior to fully considering our substantive topics (Walden 2013: 255). On this view, what counts as justification, warrant, or consistency should be decided with all relevant theory on the table as part of the process of reflective equilibrium and is not prescribed by the method itself.

Very true. It is only while levitating that you should consider how you came to levitate or why this has suddenly become possible for a creature without wings.  

Rawls, it seems, was as big a fraud as the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But the Maharishi died a billionaire. 


Sunday, 17 November 2024

Marx's misology- chapter 3 Das Kapital

In chapter 3 of Das Kapital, Karl Marx wrote 

Throughout this work, I assume, for the sake of simplicity, gold as the money-commodity.

This assumption sinks the rest of the argument. The fact is money is credit and, even where gold is the sole form of legal tender, the quantity of money will be a multiple of the gold stock. But that mutliple will fluctuate depending on expectations regarding macroeconomic or geopolitical outcomes. Thus when peace and prosperity appear secure, few will want to hold gold and thus the credit creation multiplier will be high. When times are troubled, people hold higher precautionary balances of gold. Less money is in circulation. In practice, there is arbitrage to reduce volatility and there can be government or other collective action to 'smooth' things out.  

The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values,

This is not the case. Arithmetic supplies commodities with the material- which is a number- which expresses their value. Consider the value of a pile of gold ingots compared to a different pile of gold ingots. Using Arithmetic- in particular a procedure known as 'counting'- we can say 'the value of the first pile is twice (that is two times, two being what is known as a 'number) the value of the second pile. This is because there are 12 ingots in the first pile whereas there are 6 in the second pile. There is an arithmetical operation known as 'division' which enables us to discover that 12 is twice as big as 6.'

Thus we may say 'here are 12 gold ingots- i.e. units of the money commodity- and here are 6 sheep- i.e. units of the mutton commodity. If there is a market clearing price such that each and every sheep gets sold for two gold ingots and there is no excess demand for sheep, then the price of sheep is two gold ingots or, equally, the price of two gold ingots is one sheep. 

Marx had a PhD in Law and thus did not know about Arithmetic. He thought people said 'the value of the sheep is gold because gold is money and money, indeed, is value.' This was not the case. They said 'I don't need more gold at the moment. I need a sheep which I can kill and eat. This is because I'm hungry. At the market, I gladly part with two gold ingots in order to get a sheep. The sheep has more value to me than the two ingots I paid for it.' This is the notion of 'consumer surplus' i.e. the benefit you feel you receive from being able to buy at a particular price. Suppose you can't go to market and ask me to go instead. I demand one gold ingot for myself in return for my trouble. If the value to you of a sheep is four ingots, you may grumblingly comply. But if you only valued having a sheep at two and half ingots, you would refuse.

A commodity is something which is treated as homogenous- e.g. sheep above a certain weight being treated as identical- and thus the fact that commodities exist means that Arithmetic can be used to represent commodity transactions

Marx didn't get this. He thought that nobody would be able to count sheep and say 'this herd of sheep is twice as valuable as that herd of sheep because the number of sheep in this herd is twice as great as the number in that herd'. 

Marx says money is needed 

to represent their (values as magnitudes of the same denomination,

sheep are a denomination. Six sheep are half as many as twelve sheep 

qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable.

This is what happens when, for a particular purpose, things like sheep or gold ingots are treated as homogeneous. You may say 'but this gold ingot belonged to my Granny. It is more valuable than other ingots'. The goldsmith won't pay you more for it. He may say 'keep that ingot because it has sentimental value for you. But it has none for me. I can only offer you the going rate.' Similarly, the fact that you love this sheep but not that sheep does not make them different from the point of view of the butcher.  

It thus serves as a universal measure of value. And only by virtue of this function does gold, the equivalent commodity par excellence, become money.

Gold is a commodity just like sheep or cigarettes. That is why sheep and cigarettes have sometimes been used as money when gold has not. This is because of Gresham's law. 'Bad money drives out good'. People bury their gold during bad times but may still use sheep or cigarettes as a medium of exchange. 

What has made gold legal tender- i.e. something which must be accepted in settlement of debts or for the payment of taxes- is the willingness of Mints to buy gold and turn it into coins or ingots or whatever and charge 'seigniorage' for this useful service. 

If paper money is made legal tender, seigniorage is greater because paper is cheap. Gold isn't.  

It is not money that renders commodities commensurable.

It is their utility. Sheep are commensurable from the point of view of the butcher or the wool merchant. This is what creates a market for sheep. But the same is true of gold or cigarettes or bearer bonds or dollar bills or anything else which has been used as a medium of exchange 

Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour,

Nonsense! Cowrie shells were used as money in parts of the British Empire. They weren't 'realised human labour' at all. Anyway, if there is a money commodity, then the 'realised human labour' involved is that of guys named Lord Rothschild or Lord Baring. Marx truly was as stupid as shit. He had taken over a Ricardian Labour theory of value whose Olympian summit was occupied by the Banker and the Arbitrageur. Still, this created the mirage that Socialist bureaucrats could enjoy a like facility if they took over the allocative role of the money-mavens under the tyranny of a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' where the worker would be released from the burden of buying nice stuff in the market. Instead they could queue up for hours for rotten turnips- if they were lucky.  

and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money.

This can be done using any commodity 'numeraire'. Instead of expressing prices in dollars one could express them in terms of sheep or cigarettes or gold or salt. Come to think of it, the word salary comes from the word salt. Apparently Roman soldiers were paid in salt- a relatively high value to weight commodity at that time.  

Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time. 

Money is a thing and any thing can be money. The measure of things is given in terms of numbers. For open market transactions, there is only one dimension to be considered- that of utility- and thus Arithmetic suffices. In a multi-dimensional decision spaces, arithmetic isn't enough. Around the time Marx was writing this, Hermann Grassmann, was developing the theory of what we call linear algebra, vector spaces, and what would become algebraic topology.  


The expression of the value of a commodity in gold — x commodity A = y money-commodity — is its money-form or price.

But, it is equally the case that the value of gold is its price in terms of sheep or cigarettes or time spent offering sexual services. Thus, though nothing could put a price upon my affection, I am prepared to let Beyonce use my body to slake her lust for £24.35 which is the cost of a delivery of three 15 inch Pizzas to my address. Seriously, that's a pretty good deal given the price of high-end Supermarket pizza. Sadly, Beyonce might not think so. 

A single equation, such as 1 ton of iron = 2 ounces of gold, now suffices to express the value of the iron in a socially valid manner.

No. That equation is useless unless demand and supply for gold is perfectly elastic- in other words the quantity of iron or gold that is traded can increase without changing relative prices. But that isn't how the world works. Demand for iron is 'derived' and depends on the price and quantity traded of all other relevant commodities. Consider the following- I am willing to increase pig iron production if demand for steel holds up (otherwise I will face lower prices) and if my cost of production does not rise. But this means I have to look at the price of all sorts of things- coal for electricity, shipping costs, even the price of food which greatly affects my lowest paid employees. 

Marx lived in London- a very big city with lots of arbitrageurs and relatively low shipping costs. That's why he lived in a fool's paradise of 'magically' stable prices. 

There is no longer any need for this equation to figure as a link in the chain of equations that express the values of all other commodities, because the equivalent commodity, gold, now has the character of money.

This is not true. Equations are mathematical. The price of any one commodity is not determined in isolation from any other. Rather all equations are solved simultaneously- this is the Walrasian tatonnement which is supposed to yield Arrow/Debreu general equilibrium- though that solution is inaccessible (not effectively computable) and thus though some markets clear on a daily basis, overall there is disequilibrium which, if expectations match outcomes, generates the volatility (statistical 'noise') which gives arbitrageurs their living. In other words, guys with money buy and sell on a daily basis and this smooths out prices. Such arbitrageurs are 'market makers'. 

Marx thought markets exist by magic and prices arise by magic and they are 'robust' or 'smoothed' by magic. What was the source of that magic? Labour. Why? Well Hegel had written some stupid shite to prove that Prussia was very nice (he was a Prussian Professor and thus a 'Beamte' or Civil servant of the Prussian King whose ass he needed to kiss) and TRUE freedom means OBEYING ORDERS- i.e. doing what you are told to do. Guess who has to do what they are told to do? Labourers. This proves some stupid shit which involves getting drunk and writing nonsense like the following-  

The general form of relative value has resumed its original shape of simple or isolated relative value.

No it hasn't. That's why, if you buy gold today and put it in your vault you are likely to find its price has gone down within a couple of years time- assuming Trump turns things round swiftly. Nothing is isolated from anything else- not the price of gold nor the purchasing power of a dollar or how much iron you could get by selling your herd of sheep. 

Suppose magic exists and saying 'Alakazam! I want a pizza' causes a pizza to come to you. Now suppose there is a place where you say these words and you are given a pizza because the owner of the pizza joint has been paid in advance to provide you with a pizza. Does the fact that you receive a pizza when you say 'Alakazam! I want a pizza' prove that magic works at that particular place but not elsewhere? No. The reason you keep getting pizza when you say 'Alakazam!' is because of other things which have happened or which are expected to happen- viz. the Pizza guy getting paid by some third party. 

Marx's mistake is of this childish sort. He does not get that there is a complicated 'general equilibrium' which causes the Pizzeria to appear a timeless feature of reality, rather than an evanescent phenomenon of a globalised market. In a couple of years time the Pizzerias I see on my high street may be replaced in the same manner that the fish and chip shops of my youth were replaced. The reason may have to do with the depletion of distant cod fisheries or weather conditions for Argentinian wheat or considerations more arcane yet. 

But Marx, drinking his beer and reading musty old books at the library, was a happy camper living in the magical world of a very young child. 

On the other hand, the expanded expression of relative value, the endless series of equations, has now become the form peculiar to the relative value of the money-commodity.

No. Any commodity, or bundle of commodities, may be used as the numeraire or 'unit of account'. It is important for entrepreneurs, but also house-wives, to keep track of different types of inflation- e.g. that which affects consumers as distinct from particular classes of producers- so as to avoid going bankrupt or ending up (in Victorian times) in the workhouse. 

Sadly, the underlying mathematics is intractable. The solution for the general equilibrium problem would be in exponential time- i.e. the Universe would have ended before we could compute it even if there were no problems of concurrency and impredicativity. Speaking generally, even then, solutions would not be unique. 

The series itself, too, is now given,

it is inaccessible if not unknowable. Yet, it can serve a coordinating function because people can form expectations regarding what direction things are moving in and how quickly or slowly things are likely to change.  

and has social recognition in the prices of actual commodities.

Mrs. Marx was always recognising the prices of commodities she met at social gatherings. What Marx didn't realise was that the existing price matrix depends on futures markets. That's where you get weird stuff like 'contango'. In other words, Marx's cozy Victorian fairy tale world of magically clearing markets was actually founded upon the mystic chrematistics of Keynesian expectations or rational expectation. It was there- not in a 'general glut' arising because workers had no money to buy stuff while the miserly bourgeoisie refused to spend a penny- that the alchemy of boom and bust- of shares becoming 'gilt edged' or sinking like lead- actually occurred. 

I suppose if Marx and Engels had been smart, they could have studied this and become as rich as Ricardo and, through their own lived experience, understood the mysteries of Capital. Instead they thought it was some stupid shit about getting your workers to work longer hours for the same pay. 

We have only to read the quotations of a price-list backwards, to find the magnitude of the value of money expressed in all sorts of commodities.

We'd have to know the quantity traded. 

But money itself has no price.

This stupid cunt just said he would take gold to be money. Gold has a price. How fucking drunk was Marx when he wrote this shite?  

In order to put it on an equal footing with all other commodities in this respect, we should be obliged to equate it to itself as its own equivalent.

Sheep are their own equivalent as are ciggies and gold ingots and so forth.  

What if we have paper currency? Well, by Gresham's law, bad money drives out good. In other words, gold and silver are hoarded and people transact in paper currency. Its velocity of circulation goes up. There is inflation. Its price- i.e. the basket of goods it commands- falls. Of course, this outcome can be averted if the monetary authority ensures that the money stock does not grow faster than the economy.

The price or money-form of commodities is, 

merely a matter of convention. Anything at all can be the numeraire.  

like their form of value generally, a form quite distinct from their palpable bodily form;

sheep have a form. The price of mutton does not. The thing is merely a number which can go up or down.

it is, therefore, a purely ideal or mental form.

just like 'mutton' or the number ten. But these aren't 'purely ideal' or 'mental'. There is empirical verification. If I say 'I have ten gold ingots in the safe', the auditor can show I am lying. But if I say 'I understand the transcendental implications of a truly Marxian Grammatology of the sign that is 'value' I am talking bollocks- i.e. babbling about 'purely ideal' or 'mental' nonsense. 

Although invisible, the value of iron, linen and corn has actual existence in these very articles:

No. The utility is in those articles which is why people buy them. But value is not utility. Air has utility. But, because it isn't scarce, it has no price- which is what Marx says is its value.  

it is ideally made perceptible by their equality with gold, a relation that, so to say, exists only in their own heads.

It doesn't exist at all. The fact that an exchange is made does not mean that exchange is equal. That's why there is a need for arbitrageurs- i.e. people who will buy when prices are low because they hope to sell when prices recover.  

Their owner must, therefore, lend them his tongue, or hang a ticket on them, before their prices can be communicated to the outside world.

No. The owner approaches brokers who quote him a buy/sell price (the spread being their commission). Either they do a deal or withdraw from the market. This is how markets 'clear'.  

Since the expression of the value of commodities in gold is a merely ideal act,

It is merely an act just like the expression of the value of Marx's work by means of a vigorous fart. There is nothing 'ideal' about it.  

we may use for this purpose imaginary or ideal money.

Suck my imaginary dick! 

Every trader knows, that he is far from having turned his goods into money, when he has expressed their value in a price or in imaginary money, and that it does not require the least bit of real gold, to estimate in that metal millions of pounds’ worth of goods.

Assuming the trader supplies or demands only a small portion of the total, he is a price taker. What Marx is describing is a drunken fool dreaming of mountains of gold.  

When, therefore, money serves as a measure of value, it is employed only as imaginary or ideal money.

Anything at all serves as a 'measure of value'. An alcoholic may think of his wage as translating into x numbers of bottles of hooch. Sadly, this may mean that when the price of hooch goes up, he has less to spend on healthy stuff and ends up drinking more hooch- perhaps by getting a job with a hooch maker. In this case, what is happening is an 'income effect' of a relative price change. Marx can't be blamed for not knowing about it. But Slutsky, a Marxist who formalised this notion over a century ago, should not be ignored by contemporary Leftists. If you are a Marxist, why not update his theory the way Anwar Sheikh has done? Why turn his misology into a mantra for virtue signalling, or purely theological, purposes?

 This same phenomenon. as Slutsky would soon see, is associated with what the Soviets would call 'the scissors crisis'. In a country with a traditional agricultural sector, if the price or availability of manufactured goods goes up, the rural folk may decide to revert to subsistence. They substitute inferior homespun for mill cloth. But as linkages in the economy collapse, so does its ability to defend or administer itself. What follows can be a complete collapse of the urban economy. Drunken hooligans may invade the mansions of the rich. They may wipe their arse on Gobelin tapestries. Those who have gold have their throats slit. The beggar may escape with his life. The Baron may be fed to the dogs. 

This circumstance has given rise to the wildest theories.

But nobody's was stupider than Marx. Fuck was he drinking?  

But, although the money that performs the functions of a measure of value is only ideal money,

Nope. There are people called 'auditors' who turn up and find out whether stock is 'fungible'- i.e. can be sold immediately. This is called 'marking to market' and has to do with actual not ideal money or imaginary money. 

Marx fondly believed that nobody in the City would lift an eyebrow if an entrepreneur said- 'I have a billion pounds worth of stock. This is because each pair of my dirty underwear would fetch at least 20 million quid on the open market'.  

price depends entirely upon the actual substance that is money.

Nope. It depends entirely on supply and demand. Nobody cares about the 'actual substance'. Why? Transactions are netted out at the end of the day. There may be no actual transfer of the money commodity.  

The value, or in other words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iron.

Nonsense! A ton of iron may sell for a high price or, if market conditions are bad, it may not be worth storing and thus is left to rust in a shuttered warehouse on which the rent has not been paid. The labour embedded in it is wholly irrelevant. 

According, therefore, as the measure of value is gold, silver, or copper, the value of the ton of iron will be expressed by very different prices, or will be represented by very different quantities of those metals respectively.

No. The thing may have value and yet there may be no market for it. It has no price. You are welcome to take it because nobody is interested in enforcing their property rights in it. Yet, it has value. Free goods- like air, or stuff you can take for free because they aren't 'scarce' (i.e. there is no effective demand for the thing at this time), still have value.  


If, therefore, two different commodities, such as gold and silver, are simultaneously measures of value, all commodities have two prices — one a gold-price, the other a silver-price.

This is bimetallism.  If both silver and gold coins circulate and their relative value does not reflect the price ratio between the two commodities, then it is likely that one will be hoarded while the other has higher velocity of circulation. Assuming workers only rarely get a gold coin, there was a 'Keynesian' argument for bimetallism. There was much debate about this at a later time. But Marx's Germany was only able to go on the gold standard after it got French reparations. Still, Marxism was valuable because it was so much more conservative than Henry Georgism or 'Keynesian' currency arguments. I put 'Keynesian' in scare quotes because Keynes was no more a Keynesian than Marx was a Marxist.

These exist quietly side by side, so long as the ratio of the value of silver to that of gold remains unchanged, say, at 15:1. Every change in their ratio disturbs the ratio which exists between the gold-prices and the silver-prices of commodities, and thus proves, by facts, that a double standard of value is inconsistent with the functions of a standard. 

Nope. We can say that the different types of coin served different purposes and this is what meant different premiums applied to them such that one type of coin wasn't being melted down.  


Commodities with definite prices

There are no such commodities. True, market-makers may be able to stabilize prices but there could be sharp discontinuities.  

present themselves under the form: a commodity A = x gold; b commodity B = z gold; c commodity C = y gold, &c., where a, b, c, represent definite quantities of the commodities A, B, C and x, z, y, definite quantities of gold.

But prices change from day to day- or would do so absent arbitrageurs. 

The values of these commodities are, therefore, changed in imagination

expectation of a type that lies at the heart of the practice of accountancy and business management.  

into so many different quantities of gold. Hence, in spite of the confusing variety of the commodities themselves, their values become magnitudes of the same denomination, gold-magnitudes.

No. Suppose Trump decides to go back on the gold standard with convertibility at the current market price. GNP would be 30 trillion. But nobody thinks this would mean that the US had half a million tons of gold. The total global stock is half that. It is obvious that the Gold backing of the dollar might be less than 1 percent. But even that would be massive overkill. Currently, the US only holds less than 10,000 tons. 

They are now capable of being compared with each other and measured,

They always were. Guys have been swapping sheep for wheat or iron or whatever for thousands of years.  

and the want becomes technically felt of comparing them with some fixed quantity of gold as a unit measure. This unit, by subsequent division into aliquot parts, becomes itself the standard or scale. Before they become money, gold, silver, and copper already possess such standard measures in their standards of weight, so that, for example, a pound weight, while serving as the unit, is, on the one hand, divisible into ounces, and, on the other, may be combined to make up hundredweights.  It is owing to this that, in all metallic currencies, the names given to the standards of money or of price were originally taken from the pre-existing names of the standards of weight.

By the time Marx wrote this, a departure from gold convertibility, such as that which had occurred during the Napoleonic wars, would probably not have been inflationary. Still, the riskless asset represented by gilts did play a great role in bringing this about.  


As measure of Value, and as standard of price, money has two entirely distinct functions to perform.

Nope. They are one and the same. It is as a 'store' of value that its function could diverge from that of being a medium of exchange. Marx truly was as stupid as shit.  

It is the measure of value inasmuch as it is the socially recognised incarnation of human labour;

No it isn't. Only demand and supply matter. There was some demand for Marxian shite. Das Kapital sold a thousand copies which wasn't bad at all.  

it is the standard of price inasmuch as it is

the price at which the market clears.  

a fixed weight of metal.

Nope. That weight may be changed but markets may decide that doesn't matter. To some extent money, as a medium of exchange, is endogenous. This was obvious to actual financiers. It wasn't obvious to stupid nutters with shitty German PhDs.  

... only in so far as it is itself a product of labour, and, therefore, potentially variable in value, can gold serve as a measure of value. 

No. This is what makes gold an inferior measure of value. A big new gold discovery would be inflationary. Equally, if gold stocks fail to keep pace with global economic growth- there will be a deflationary effect. It is better to have paper money and a monetary authority which ensures that the value of money remains stable relative to a basket of goods and services.  


It is, in the first place, quite clear that a change in the value of gold does not, in any way, affect its function as a standard of price. No matter how this value varies, the proportions between the values of different quantities of the metal remain constant. However great the fall in its value, 12 ounces of gold still have 12 times the value of 1 ounce; and in prices, the only thing considered is the relation between different quantities of gold. Since, on the other hand, no rise or fall in the value of an ounce of gold can alter its weight, no alteration can take place in the weight of its aliquot parts. Thus gold always renders the same service as an invariable standard of price, however much its value may vary.

No. Gold is like sheep or cows. The same problem arises with gold as it does with using cows as the numeraire.  

In the second place, a change in the value of gold does not interfere with its functions as a measure of value.

Yes it does. If gold suddenly becomes plentiful, its price will fall 

The change affects all commodities simultaneously, and, therefore, caeteris paribus, leaves their relative values inter se, unaltered, although those values are now expressed in higher or lower gold-prices.

In technical terms, Marx is saying Money is 'super-neutral'- i.e. the real economy unaffected by the level of the money supply but also that the rate of money supply growth has no effect on real variables. This may be the case. What can't be the case is that this happens by magic. 

The cretin Marx thinks he has discovered some philosophical reason why this magic must always obtain. 

Just as when we estimate the value of any commodity by a definite quantity of the use-value of some other commodity,

Nobody does so. When you buy a watch you don't say 'this watch is as valuable as 500 cheeseburgers'.  

so in estimating the value of the former in gold,

i.e. saying 'I guess this watch must cost at least 500 guineas. I've heard that you can't get a watch of this quality for much less than that.' Buy what actually happens is you get quotes from different vendors and thus get an idea of the going price.  

we assume nothing more than that the production of a given quantity of gold costs, at the given period, a given amount of labour.

When has this ever happened? Nobody knows how much labour went into a watch. As for gold, a lot of it was dug out of the ground many years ago. Who knows how much labour it took at that time? Probably a lot more than it does now because technology is more advanced. 

As regards the fluctuations of prices generally, they are subject to the laws of elementary relative value investigated in a former chapter.

There are no such 'laws'. The fact is the same commodity can be produced in a more or less labour intensive manner. Sometimes gold nuggets are just picked up from the river bed by passing strollers. Sometimes arduous labour is involved in digging tunnels to get at the gold reef.  

A general rise in the prices of commodities can result only, either from a rise in their values — the value of money remaining constant

Nope. If there is a rise in prices, the value of any unit of money has fallen.  

— or from a fall in the value of money,

i.e. inflation has occurred. That means prices have risen.  

the values of commodities remaining constant.

This cretin thinks value remains the same because embedded labour power remains the same. But a thing may suddenly become scarce and thus command a high price. Equally, if there is inflation- because the Government is printing too much money- the prices (and hence, by Marx's stipulation, the value) of things have risen. 

The fact is if there is dissaving- i.e. people borrow to spend, rising demand can drive up prices. This is what happens when there is a speculative asset bubble. Equally, if people become pessimistic about the future- e.g. they fear a devastating war will break out- they may decide to save money rather than spend. Lack of demand drives down the price level.  


The relationship between the stock of money and the price level is given by the equation MV=PT where V is the velocity of circulation and T is the total level of transactions. This is an accounting identity. Marx didn't understand this 

On the other hand, a general fall in prices can result only, either from a fall in the values of commodities — the value of money remaining constant —

if things get cheaper, the value of money rises. Savers win. Borrowers lose. Landlords are happy that the rents they get buys them more. Tenants are unhappy as a bigger proportion of their income goes on rent. 

or from a rise in the value of money, the values of commodities remaining constant.

This can't happen. If the value of money rises, prices have fallen. 

It therefore by no means follows, that a rise in the value of money necessarily implies a proportional fall in the prices of commodities; or that a fall in the value of money implies a proportional rise in prices.

True. The velocity of circulation could change. 

Such change of price holds good only in the case of commodities whose value remains constant.

But their relative price has increased. This means demand is likely to fall because of the 'substitution effect'.  

With those, for example, whose value rises, simultaneously with, and proportionally to, that of money, there is no alteration in price.

But demand is likely to fall. 

And if their value rise either slower or faster than that of money, the fall or rise in their prices will be determined by the difference between the change in their value and that of money; and so on.

The change in relative prices gives rise to income and substitution effects. This affects the level of Transactions. Thus both inflation or deflation brought about by monetary shocks, or bad monetary theory, have undesirable effects on the real economy. 

Let us now go back to the consideration of the price-form.

By degrees there arises a discrepancy between the current money-names of the various weights of the precious metal figuring as money, and the actual weights which those names originally represented.

D'uh! A pound sterling wasn't a pound of silver in Marx's time.  

This discrepancy is the result of historical causes, among which the chief are: — (1) The importation of foreign money into an imperfectly developed community. This happened in Rome in its early days, where gold and silver coins circulated at first as foreign commodities. The names of these foreign coins never coincide with those of the indigenous weights. (2) As wealth increases, the less precious metal is thrust out by the more precious from its place as a measure of value, copper by silver, silver by gold, however much this order of sequence may be in contradiction with poetical chronology. 

No. Bad money- i.e. the inferior currency- drives out the good money which is hoarded. When gold is deposited with Goldsmiths who have strong vaults, you start to get credit creation. In other words a small stock of gold or silver supports a large number of transactions denominated in gold or silver.  

 The word pound, for instance, was the money-name given to an actual pound weight of silver. When gold replaced silver as a measure of value, the same name was applied according to the ratio between the values of silver and gold, to perhaps 1-15th of a pound of gold. The word pound, as a money-name, thus becomes differentiated from the same word as a weight-name.  The debasing of money carried on for centuries by kings and princes to such an extent that, of the original weights of the coins, nothing in fact remained but the names. 

So what? Lots of words change their meaning over time. Marx had wasted his time in the British library. He was too stupid to understand how the economy actually worked. But then, his job was to tell stupid lies.  


These historical causes convert the separation of the money-name from the weight-name into an established habit with the community. Since the standard of money is on the one hand purely conventional, and must on the other hand find general acceptance, it is in the end regulated by law.

Mints did this. They produced coins of a fixed weight and purity. It is the notion of legal tender- i.e. what type of coin must be accepted in settlement of debts or the payment of taxes- which has salience here. If paper money is legal tender, that is what people will use wherever they can.

A given weight of one of the precious metals, an ounce of gold, for instance, becomes officially divided into aliquot parts, with legally bestowed names, such as pound, dollar, &c. These aliquot parts, which thenceforth serve as units of money, are then subdivided into other aliquot parts with legal names, such as shilling, penny, &c. But, both before and after these divisions are made, a definite weight of metal is the standard of metallic money. The sole alteration consists in the subdivision and denomination.

All this didn't matter by the time Marx was writing this. What mattered was the credit multiplier which depended on expectations. If there was a financial panic, there would be a run on the banks. This would trigger a depression. Expectations could create Reality.  


The prices, or quantities of gold, into which the values of commodities are ideally changed, are therefore now expressed in the names of coins, or in the legally valid names of the subdivisions of the gold standard. Hence, instead of saying: A quarter of wheat is worth an ounce of gold; we say, it is worth £3 17s. 10 1/2d. In this way commodities express by their prices how much they are worth, and money serves as money of account whenever it is a question of fixing the value of an article in its money-form. 

But this happened regardless of convertibility into gold. Marx was behind the times. 

The name of a thing is something distinct from the qualities of that thing. I know nothing of a man, by knowing that his name is Jacob.

I know a lot about him precisely because his name is not Jamshed or Jagdish.  

In the same way with regard to money, every trace of a value-relation disappears in the names pound, dollar, franc, ducat, &c.

No. These are the names of currency. If someone says 'that is ten pounds', I understand that the thing is something available for me to buy with the stuff in my wallet. 

The confusion caused by attributing a hidden meaning to these cabalistic signs is all the greater, because these money-names express both the values of commodities, and, at the same time, aliquot parts of the weight of the metal that is the standard of money.

There is no such confusion. We don't attribute a hidden or cabalistic meaning to Euros or dollars or Rupees or whatever.  

 On the other hand, it is absolutely necessary that value, in order that it may be distinguished from the varied bodily forms of commodities, should assume this material and unmeaning, but, at the same time, purely social form. 

Gibberish. Things in a shop have sticker prices. Things in the homes of people I visit do not. Speaking generally, stuff I see there is not for sale. It is not socially acceptable to say 'how much do you want for this chair? What about the bed? I take it your wife comes with it.'  


Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commodity.

No. Land and animals have a price. There is no 'labour realised' in a goat or a stretch of marsh land. 

Hence the expression of the equivalence of a commodity with the sum of money constituting its price, is a tautology, 

It is nonsense. I may have bought a kitten but my cat is not equivalent to the price I paid. Chairman Miaow is my heart's delight.  

just as in general the expression of the relative value of a commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commodities.

No. It is a price ratio. 

But although price, being the exponent of the magnitude of a commodity’s value, is the exponent of its exchange-ratio with money, it does not follow that the exponent of this exchange-ratio is necessarily the exponent of the magnitude of the commodity’s value.

Market prices are merely those at which markets clear- i.e. there is no excess supply or demand. It is likely that there is considerable consumer and producer surplus.  

Suppose two equal quantities of socially necessary labour

Nobody knows what labour is 'socially necessary'. There may be some better way of making the thing or there may be a better thing to make.  

to be respectively represented by 1 quarter of wheat and £2 (nearly 1/2 oz. of gold), £2 is the expression in money of the magnitude of the value of the quarter of wheat, or is its price.

Is this nutter talking about productivity? It takes as much labour to grow two quid worth of wheat as three quid worth of potatoes. We say labour in the wheat sector is less productive. This means that rents and profits are likely to be lower for wheat than for potatoes. At the margin, agricultural land will switch to growing potatoes. 

If now circumstances allow of this price being raised to £3, or compel it to be reduced to £1, then although £1 and £3 may be too small or too great properly to express the magnitude of the wheat’s value; nevertheless they are its prices, for they are, in the first place, the form under which its value appears, i.e., money;

Not wheat appears as wheat. It can be sold for money, but its form does not become money.  

and in the second place, the exponents of its exchange-ratio with money.

That is just the price. 

If the conditions of production, in other words, if the productive power of labour remain constant, the same amount of social labour-time must, both before and after the change in price, be expended in the reproduction of a quarter of wheat. This circumstance depends, neither on the will of the wheat producer, nor on that of the owners of other commodities.

He just means labour productivity is determined by the state of technology and available physical capital- e.g. ploughs, tractors etc. 

Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production, it expresses the connexion that necessarily exists between a certain article and the portion of the total labour-time of society required to produce it.

No. Prices may rise or fall for exogenous reasons. They are not determined by labour productivity. In particular land or capital productivity can rise greatly. This is what has happened in affluent countries. This has permitted a much higher standard of living. Marx's theory was backward looking and thus increasingly irrelevant, or actively mischievous, for a technological age. 

As soon as magnitude of value is converted into price, the above necessary relation takes the shape of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this exchange-ratio may express either the real magnitude of that commodity’s value, or the quantity of gold deviating from that value, for which, according to circumstances, it may be parted with.

Marx just means that even if productivity rises, wages or prices might fall. This is because when supply increases but demand is inelastic, total revenue can fall. That's one reason the terms of trade tend to move against primary producers. 

The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from the latter, is inherent in the price-form itself.

It is inherent in life. I may spend a lot of time and effort doing stuff which nobody appreciates. The consequence is that my wife leaves me and I become as poor as shit.  

This is no defect, but, on the contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregularities that compensate one another.

Gibberish. Elderly peasant women understand the market well enough and get a good price for the eggs they have brought for sale.  

The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value.

Value, for economists, is utility. If there is no scarcity, a thing of great utility may have zero price. That does not mean clean air or beautiful natural scenery have no value.  

Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders,

No. That is merely a manner of speaking. It is not the case that I can buy your conscience and give it to someone who lacks any such thing.  

and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities.

Nonsense! It simply isn't true that you can buy virtue from a nun and give it to your slut of a wife.  

Hence an object may have a price without having value.

It has utility for some purpose though that purpose may be unworthy or harmful. Drugs have a price though people may be better off never consuming them. 

The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics.

The price of drugs is real. It is an empirical fact that people who take them gain something by doing so- e.g. reduced craving or postponement of 'withdrawal' symptoms. Similarly, complex numbers (which have an 'imaginary' component) feature in equations describing physical or chemical processes and can be empirically verified. Marx is trying to be 'mathsy' but is merely displaying his ignorance.  

On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it.

Marx is highlighting the stupidity of the labour theory of value. Why does uncultivated land command a price? The answer is that has a potential use. Under some set of circumstances, it could be very valuable indeed. Speculators understand this. There can be a real estate 'bubble'- like the one Dickens depicts in Martin Chuzzlewit- where mosquito ridden swamp land is bought and sold for astronomical prices.  

Price, like relative value in general, expresses the value of a commodity (e.g., a ton of iron), by stating that a given quantity of the equivalent (e.g., an ounce of gold), is directly exchangeable for iron. But it by no means states the converse, that iron is directly exchangeable for gold.

It may be. But, equally, unless the price in question is 'market clearing' rather than 'administered' the ton of iron may find no takers. Indeed, it is likely that it will remain on the inventory till market conditions improve. 

In order, therefore, that a commodity may in practice act effectively as exchange-value,

there has to be effective demand for it- i.e. demand backed up by the ability to pay. Chairman Miaow is a great admirer of my books. Sadly, he can't buy them on Amazon because he has no money.  

it must quit its bodily shape, must transform itself from mere imaginary into real gold,

not 'imaginary'- 'potential'. This is a matter for auditors who check your valuation of stuff in your inventory. Consider my poetry. You can say 'I can imagine you writing good poetry because I can imagine you turning into a flying unicorn. But you don't have the potential to be a good poet because you are stupid and lack literary talent of any kind.'  

although to the commodity such transubstantiation may be more difficult than to the Hegelian “concept,”

Nonsense! A ton of iron need make no special effort to get sold at a time when the construction sector is booming.  

the transition from “necessity” to “freedom,” or to a lobster the casting of his shell,

lobsters don't find this difficult at all.  

or to Saint Jerome the putting off of the old Adam. 

By not fucking or listening to snakes. Some may find this difficult. Snakes can be very witty you know.  

Though a commodity may, side by side with its actual form (iron, for instance),

a commodity is its actual form.  

take in our imagination the form of gold,

Not our imagination. We can empirically verify whether it can be sold and how much gold this will get us.  

yet it cannot at one and the same time actually be both iron and gold.

It can only be iron. The guy who owns it can exchange it for gold- if there is effective demand for it.  

To fix its price, it suffices to equate it to gold in imagination.

No. That's not how business works. You have to empirically verify that there is effective demand for it and then see what quantity of gold you can purchase with that money. This is a case of verifying potential not dreaming of Castles in Spain or the vast piles of gold in which Scrooge McDuck likes to bathe.  

But to enable it to render to its owner the service of a universal equivalent, it must be actually replaced by gold.

No. You can raise money on your inventory.  

If the owner of the iron were to go to the owner of some other commodity offered for exchange, and were to refer him to the price of the iron as proof that it was already money,

the other guy would call say 'call your banker and see if he will release funds on that security. Actually, I'll send you to my banker. Let him take the commission on the deal. He will be grateful to me and that may come in handy when I need a bridging loan.' 

he would get the same answer as St. Peter gave in heaven to Dante, when the latter recited the creed —

“Assai bene è trascorsa
d’esta moneta già la lega e ’l peso,
ma dimmi se tu l’hai ne la tua borsa.”

( “Now this coin is well-examined, and now we know its alloy and its weight. But tell me: do you have it in your purse?” And I: “Indeed I do—so bright and round that nothing in its stamp leads me to doubt.”)

Actually, Dante's Florence had quite a sophisticated Banking system. The Banker would pop by, strike a deal, and the transaction would proceed on the basis of a handshake. Money is Credit that is Faith in the counterparty. Religion may require more than Faith. It may require Hope and Charity and not wanking while looking at dirty pictures. 

A price therefore implies both that a commodity is exchangeable for money, and also that it must be so exchanged.

A market clearing price is good enough for 'marking to market'- i.e. providing a valuation- stuff you have in your inventory. Your Banker can make a profit providing bridging finance. 

On the other hand, gold serves as an ideal measure of value,

it doesn't because of exogenous shocks. It is better to have paper money managed by a competent Central Bank.  

only because it has already, in the process of exchange, established itself as the money-commodity. Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash.

Gibberish. Prices are an empirical measure of value as used in Accountancy, Banking and Commerce in general. Hard cash does not matter. Credit does. This in turn is about Expectations. The time is not distant when people will never see 'hard cash'. It won't have to lurk around or jerk around or smirk at drunken nutters talking bollocks about Capitalism.