Critique of political economy

Critique of political economy or simply the first critique of economy is a form of social critique that rejects the conventional ways of distributing resources. The critique also rejects what its advocates believe are unrealistic axioms, faulty historical assumptions, and taking conventional economic mechanisms as a given
or as transhistorical (true for all human societies for all time). The critique asserts the conventional economy is merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources, which emerged along with modernity (post-Renaissance Western society).
Critics of political economy do not necessarily aim to create their own theories regarding how to administer economies. Critics of economy commonly view "the economy" as a bundle of concepts and societal and normative practices, rather than being the result of any self-evident economic laws. Hence, they also tend to consider the views which are commonplace within the field of economics as faulty, or simply as pseudoscience.
There are multiple critiques of political economy today, but what they have in common is critique of what critics of political economy tend to view as dogma, i.e. claims of the economy as a necessary and transhistorical societal category.
John Ruskin
In the 1860s, John Ruskin published his essay Unto This Last which he came to view as his central work. The essay was originally written as a series of publications in a magazine, which ended up having to suspend the publications, due to the severe controversy the articles caused. While Ruskin is generally known as an important art critic, his study of the history of art was a component that gave him some insight into the pre-modern societies of the Middle Ages, and their social organisation which he was able to contrast to his contemporary condition. Ruskin attempted to mobilize a methodological/scientific critique of new political economy, as it was envisaged by the classical economists.
Ruskin viewed the concept of "the economy" as a kind of "collective mental lapse or collective concussion", and he viewed the emphasis on precision in industry as a kind of slavery. Due to the fact that Ruskin regarded the political economy of his time as "mad", he said that it interested him as much as "a science of gymnastics which had as its axiom that human beings in fact didn't have skeletons." Ruskin declared that economics rests on positions that are exactly the same. According to Ruskin, these axioms resemble thinking, not that human beings do not have skeletons but rather that they consist entirely of skeletons. Ruskin wrote that he did not oppose the truth value of this theory, he merely wrote that he denied that it could be successfully implemented in the world in the state it was in. He took issue with the ideas of "natural laws", "economic man", and the prevailing notion of value and aimed to point out the inconsistencies in the thinking of the economists. He critiqued John Stuart Mill for thinking that "the opinions of the public" was reflected adequately by market prices.
Ruskin coined illth to refer to unproductive wealth. Ruskin is not well known as a political thinker today but when in 1906 a journalist asked the first generation of Labour Party members of Parliament in the United Kingdom which book had most inspired them, Unto This Last emerged as an undisputed chart-topper.
Criticism
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels regarded much of Ruskin's critique as reactionary. His idealisation of the Middle Ages made them reject him as a "feudal utopian".
Karl Marx
In the 21st century, Marx is probably the most famous critic of political economy, with his three-volume magnum opus, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, as one of his most famous books. Marx's companion Engels also engaged in critique of political economy in his 1844 Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, which helped lay down some of the foundation for what Marx was to take further.
Marx's critique of political economy encompasses the study and exposition of the mode of production and ideology of bourgeois society, and its critique of (real abstraction), that is, the fundamental economic, i.e. social categories present within what for Marx is the capitalist mode of production, for example abstract labour. In contrast to the classics of political economy, Marx was concerned with lifting the ideological veil of surface phenomena and exposing the norms, axioms, social relations, institutions, and so on, that reproduced capital.
The central works in Marx's critique of political economy are Grundrisse, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and Das Kapital. Marx's works are often explicitly named for example: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Marx cited Engels' article Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy several times in Das Kapital. Trotskyists and other Leninists tend to implicitly or explicitly argue that these works constitute and or contain "economical theories", which can be studied independently. This was also the common understanding of Marx's work on economy that was put forward by Soviet orthodoxy. Since this is the case, it remains a matter of controversy whether Marx's critique of political economy is to be understood as a critique of the political economy or, according to the orthodox interpretation another theory of economics. The critique of political economy is considered the most important and central project within Marxism which has led to, and continues to lead to a large number of advanced approaches within and outside academic circles.
Foundational concepts
Labour and capital are historically specific forms of social relations, and labour is not the source of all wealth.
Labour is the other side of the same coin as capital, labour presupposes capital, and capital presupposes labour.
Money is not in any way something transhistorical or natural, which goes for the whole economy as well as the other categories specific to the mode of production, and its gains in value are constituted due to social relations rather than any inherent qualities.
The individual does not exist in some form of vacuum but is rather enmeshed in social relations.
Marx's critique of the quasi-religious and ahistorical methodology of economists
Marx described the view of contemporaneous economists and theologians on social phenomena as similarly unscientific.
Marx continued to emphasize the ahistorical thought of the modern economists in the Grundrisse, where he among other endeavors, critiqued the liberal economist Mill. Marx also viewed the viewpoints which implicitly regarded the institutions of modernity as transhistorical as fundamentally deprived of historical understanding.
According to the French philosopher Jacques Rancière, what Marx understood, and what the economists failed to recognise was that the value-form is not something essential, but merely a part of the capitalist mode of production.
On scientifically adequate research
Marx offered a critique regarding the idea of people being able to conduct scientific research in this domain. He wrote:
On vulgar economists
Marx criticized what he regarded as the false critique of political economy of his contemporaries, sometimes even more forcefully than when he critiqued the classical economists he described as vulgar economists. In Marx's view, the errors of some socialist authors led the workers' movement astray. He rejected Ferdinand Lassalle's iron law of wages, which he regarded as mere phraseology. He also rejected Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's attempts to do what Hegel did for religion, law, and so on for political economy, as well as regarding what is social as subjective, and what was societal as merely subjective abstractions.
Interpretations of Marx's critique of political economy
Some scholars view Marx's critique as being a critique of commodity fetishism and the manner in which this concept expresses a criticism of modernity and its modes of socialisation. Other scholars who engage with Marx's critique of political economy affirm the critique might assume a more Kantian sense, which transforms "Marx's work into a foray concerning the imminent antinomies that lie at the heart of capitalism, where politics and economy intertwine in impossible ways."
Contemporary Marxian
Regarding contemporary Marxian critiques of political economy, these are generally accompanied by a rejection of the more naturalistically influenced readings of Marx, as well as other readings later deemed (worldview Marxism), that was popularised as late as toward the end of the 20th century.
According to some scholars in this field, contemporary critiques of political economy and contemporary German Ökonomiekritik have been at least partly neglected in the anglophone world.
Feminism
There has been a growing literature on feminist critiques of economics in the 21st century. But feminist critiques of economics can be found as early as the beginning of the 18th century.
According to Julie A. Nelson, feminist critiques of economics should start from the premise that "economics, like any science, is socially constructed." These feminists therefore argue economics is a field socially constructed to privilege Western, and heterosexual persons that identify as male.
They generally incorporate feminist theory and frameworks to show how economics communities signal expectations regarding appropriate participants to the exclusion of outsiders. Such criticisms extend to the theories, methodologies and research areas of economics, in order to show that accounts of economic life are deeply influenced by biased histories, social structures, norms, cultural practices, interpersonal interactions, and politics. Feminists often also make a critical distinction that masculine bias in economics is primarily a result of gender, not sex. But feminist critiques of economics, and the economy, can also include other views such as concern with an ever increasing rate of environmental degradation.
Differences between critics of economy and critics of economical issues
One may differentiate between those who engage in critique of political economy, which takes on a more ontological character, where authors criticise the fundamental concepts and social categories which reproduce the economy as an entity. While other authors, which the critics of political economy would consider only to deal with the surface phenomena of the economy, have a naturalized understanding of these social processes. Hence the epistemological differences between critics of economy and economists can also at times be very large.
In the eyes of the critics of political economy, the critics of economic issues merely critique certain practices in attempts to implicitly or explicitly rescue the political economy; these authors might for example propose universal basic income or to implement a planned economy.
Others
Contemporary
Sociologists
Orlando Patterson, John Cowles professor of sociology at Harvard University, argues that economics is a pseudoscience.
Philosophers
Slavoj Žižek
Historians
Moishe Postone
Historical
Historians
Thomas Carlyle
Roman Rozdolsky
Poets
Carl Jonas Love Almqvist
August Strindberg
Miscellaneous
Paul Lafargue
See also
Anti-work
Critique of work
Katrine Marçal
Hans-Georg Backhaus
Helmut Reichelt
Moishe Postone
Neue Marx-Lektüre
References
Bibliography
Johnsdotter S, Carlbom A, editors. Goda sanningar: debattklimatet och den kritiska forskningens villkor. Lund: Nordic Academic Press; 2010.
Braudel F. Kapitalismens dynamik. (La Dynamique du Capitalisme) [Ny utg.]. Göteborg: Daidalos; 2001.
Ankarloo D, editor. Marx ekonomikritik. Stockholm: Tidskriftsföreningen Fronesis; 2008.
Eklund K. Vår ekonomi: en introduktion till världsekonomin. Upplaga 15. Lund: Studentlitteratur; 2020.
Tidskriftsföreningen Fronesis. Arbete. Stockholm: Tidskriftsfören. Fronesis; 2002.
Baudrillard J. The Mirror of Production. Telos Press; 1975.
Marx K. Till kritiken av den politiska ekonomin. [Ny utg.]. Göteborg: Proletärkultur; 1981.
Further reading
Articles
Scholarly articles
Alan Christopher Finlayson, Thomas A. Lyson, Andrew Pleasant, Kai A. Schafft and Robert J. Torres "Invisible Hand": Neoclassical Economics and the Ordering of Society" Critical Sociology 2005 31: 515 DOI: 10.1163/156916305774482183
Backhaus, H. G. (1969). Zur Dialektik der Wertform. Thesis Eleven, 1(1), 42-76. (In German)
Granberg, M. (2015). The ideal worker as real abstraction: labour conflict and subjectivity in nursing. Work, Employment and Society, 29(5), 792–807. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017014563102
Granberg, Magnus "Reactionary radicalism and the analysis of worker subjectivity in Marx's critique of political economy"
Mau, Søren (2018). Den dobbelte fordrejning: Begrebet fetichisme i kritikken af den politiske økonomi. Slagmark - Tidsskrift for idéhistorie, (77), 103–122. https://doi.org/10.7146/slagmark.vi77.124228
Paul Trawick and Alf Hornborg. (2015) Revisiting the Image of Limited Good: On Sustainability, Thermodynamics, and the Illusion of Creating Wealth, Current Anthropology, Vol. 56, No. 1 pp. 1-27, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research
Romantic critique of political economy articles
Mortensen, Anders – Att göra "penningens genius till sin slaf". Om Carl Jonas Love Almqvists romantiska ekonomikritik – Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund. Årsbok (in Swedish).
Books
Critique of political economy
Bernard Steigler (2010) – For a New Critique of Political Economy
Bonefield Werner (2014) – Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason
Gibson-Graham, J. K. – The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy
Baudrillard, Jean – The Mirror of Production
Baudrillard, Jean – For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign
Lawson, T. (1997). Economics and reality. Routledge.
Nelson, Robert Henry, 1944-. - Economics as religion : from Samuelson to Chicago and beyond / Robert H. Nelson ; foreword by Max Stackhouse.. - 2001. -
Marçal, Katrine Mother of Invention: How Good Ideas Get Ignored in an Economy Built for Men ISBN 978-00-0843-077-1 English edition of Att uppfinna världen
Marçal, Katrine 2012 – Det enda könet (Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?) ISBN 978-91-0012-461-8
On Marx critique of political economy
Murray, Patrick (2016) – The mismeasure of wealth – Essays on Marx and social form - Brill
Kurz, Robert, 1943-2012. - The substance of capital / Robert Kurtz ; translated from German by Robin Halpin. - 2016. -
Neue Marx-Lektüre
History
Bryer, Robert – Accounting for History in Marx's Capital: The Missing Link
Kurz, Robert, 1943–2012, Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus: ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft (also known as: The Satanic Mills) – 2009 – Erweit. Neuasg.
Pilling, Geoff - Marx's Capital, Philosophy and Political Economy
Classic works
Marx, Karl – Grundrisse
Ruskin, John, Unto this Last LibriVox.
Essays
Postone, Moishe – Necessity, Labor and Time: A Reinterpretation of the Marxian Critique of Capitalism
External links
1995–2004 Conference Papers – Critique Of Political Economy / International Working Group on Value Theory (COPE-IWGVT)
A collection of material related to Engels and Marx's critique of political economy
Critique of Political Economy – a 2016 edition of the philosophy journal: crisis and critique
A lecture regarding Marx's critique of political economy.
Texts translated to english from a contemporary German group critical of political economy
Criticisms
Critique of political economy
Philosophy of economics
Social philosophy