O Objeto do Autoconhecimento | Richard Hunsinger

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(O Objeto do Autoconhecimento: notas à crítica da consciência reificada e formação racial de classe através da Tradição Radical Negra.) Richard Hunsinger é um amigo de longa data que vem desenvolvendo estudos sociais e literários quanto à formação social do capital. Seus escritos desvendam pedaços deste tracejo histórico com extrema riqueza.

Original disponível aqui, acessado 01/08/2022. Traduzido por V. S. Conttren, Agosto 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/5R2WV. Disponível em pdf aqui.

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O Objeto do Autoconhecimento

Richard Hunsinger

Aqui está o verdadeiro problema do trabalho moderno. Cá está o cerne do problema da Religião e da Democracia, da Humanidade. Palavras e gestos fúteis não valem nada. Da exploração do proletariado sombrio vem o Valor Excedente filtrado de animais humanos que, em terras cultivadas, a Máquina e o poder aproveitado encobrem e ocultam. A emancipação do homem é a emancipação do trabalho e a emancipação do trabalho é a libertação daquela maioria básica de trabalhadores que são amarelos, marrons e negros.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Reconstrução Negra na América 1860-1880

Du Bois nos oferece uma formulação do modo de operação global da produção capitalista que une habilmente o abstrato e o concreto. O que é ainda mais notável nesta passagem é a brevidade com que ela atravessa o processo de formação social do valor e a necessidade objetiva de sua superação, aquele momento a partir do qual se origina a emancipação universal como o duplo movimento provocado pelas particularidades dos graus diferenciados de exploração. A continuação de nosso discurso sobre a reificação encontra aqui uma expressão na ocultação desta função diferenciadora da racialização, a Máquina e o Poder aproveitado, para a qual Du Bois chama nossa atenção. Esta teorização do Valor Excedente é a síntese da tese que abre a Reconstrução Negra na América: 1860-1880, a do caráter essencial do trabalhador negro à formação do capitalismo como sistema econômico mundial, onde, como Cedric J. Robinson esclarece, não foi como escravos que o trabalhador negro entrou neste sistema, mas como mão de obra. É nesta “mudança dos nomes das coisas” que Du Bois reconstrói as suposições de autonomia da industrialização em relação às necessidades de exploração das plantações, além do imediato aparecimento do trabalho assalariado nas complexas mediações raciais de classe que formam a materialização da supremacia branca e da superioridade racial, a partir da qual se desenvolveria o “tecido da nação, codificado por seu passado escravo.”¹

Ocorre uma operação de des-fetichização que ocorre nesta linguagem, ao mesmo tempo em que constrói uma materialização da raça no desenvolvimento histórico do modo de produção capitalista. Onde Lukács atribui o fenômeno da reificação não apenas à presença ou inicialmente ao efeito desintegrador da troca de mercadorias nas formas pré-modernas de sociedade, mas ao estabelecimento de uma estrutura de mercadorias que agora “penetra na sociedade em todos os seus aspectos e a [remodela] à sua própria imagem,” podemos encontrar nas intervenções historiográficas da tradição radical negra uma concretização da atualidade histórica desta subsunção da vida social na forma de mercadoria.² A formulação de Robinson da composição orgânica do capital nesta época, aquele movimento e processo pelo qual “os trabalhadores africanos haviam sido transmutados pelos cânones perversos do capitalismo mercantilista em propriedade” e assim “a força de trabalho africana como mão de obra escrava foi integrada na composição orgânica do capitalismo manufatureiro e industrial do século XIX,” sustentando assim o surgimento de um mercado mundial extraeuropeu dentro do qual o acúmulo de capital foi conquistado para o desenvolvimento futuro da produção industrial, “traça esta subsunção de um elemento particular do corpo social globalizado em sua mediação como mercadoria.”³ Esta formação social de trabalho criador de valor é a violência concreta da abstração, pela qual o trabalho humano é substanciado por esta alienação do trabalho de suas capacidades; o Comércio Transatlântico de Escravos marca o projeto mais intencional na formação histórica mundial de um proletariado global.

The Critique of Political Economy | István Mészáros

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We reproduce here a chapter from Mészáros’ “Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness” regarding the “critique of political economy” and its meaning beyond mere phrasing and sloganeering. In it, Mészáros makes it clear that the objective self-critique of the object in question moves the subject beyond the determinate horizons of the object of study itself, that the task becomes the totality of a system itself.

From: MÉSZÁROS, István. The Critique of Political Economy. In: “Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness.” Vol. I. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010, pp. 317-331. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, February 2022. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/65MXD. Available as a pdf here.

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The Critique of Political Economy

István Mészáros

All of Marx’s principal works carry the title or the subtitle “A Critique of Political Economy,” starting with the posthumously published 1857-58 manuscripts of the Grundrisse zu einer Kritik der Politischen Economie (that is: Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy), followed by the book he published in 1859 under the title A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and crowned by his magisterial, even if unfinished, Capital, which has as its subtitle A Critique of Political Economy. Moreover, the extensive volumes of his Theories of Surplus Value also belong to the same complex of investigations. Thus, obviously, the critical settling of accounts with political economy occupied a central place in Marx’s lifework.

There had to be a very good reason why Marx dedicated so many years of his life to the critical assessment of political economy. As he made it explicit in his 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, that was because he became convinced that “the anatomy of ‘civil society’ has to be sought in political economy.”¹

Understandably, he contrasted in the most outspoken terms “classical political economy” with “vulgar economy,” saying that “by classical political economy, I understand that economy which, since the time of W. Petty, has investigated the real relations of production in bourgeois society, in contradistinction to vulgar economy, which deals with appearances only, ruminates without ceasing on the materials long since provided by scientific economy, and there seeks plausible explanations of the most obtrusive phenomena, for bourgeois daily use, but for the rest, confines itself to systematizing in a pedantic way, and proclaiming for everlasting truths, the trite ideas held by the self-complacent bourgeoisie with regard to their own world, to them the best of all possible worlds.”²

The illusion of the Tail wagging the Dog | Terezinha Ferrari

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Terezinha Ferrari is a Marxist researcher who has worked with José Chasin, Lívia and Ivan Cotrim. “Graduated in Sociology and Politics from the Foundation School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo (1977). Master’s in History from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (1988) and PhD in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (2003). She is currently a professor at the Santo André University Center. Researcher and writer in the areas of Sociology of Work, Philosophy of Technique, Development and Urban-Cultural Planning with emphasis on the study of forms of work organization in cities, contemporary social movements and struggles and the substantiality of technique as part of the human-societal productive forces.”

The following is an excerpt from Terezinha Ferrari’s “Fabricalização da cidade e ideologia da circulação,” pp. 95-108. Translated by V. S. Conttren, August 2021. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/JKG65. Available as a pdf here.

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The Illusion of the Tail Wagging the Dog

Terezinha Ferrari

1.  Ideology of Circulation

Logistical activities have grown hypertrophied in recent years due to the needs of production and circulation. Before being a providential or autonomous technological development, such hypertrophy is the cause and consequence of the increase in the turnover speed of capital and, as we shall see, of counter-measures to deal with the historical trend of falling profit rates.

Transport and logistics are activities known and practised for the displacement and supply of armies in Antiquity from at least the campaigns of Hannibal, Cyrus and Alexander. During the World Wars of the 20th century, logistic concepts were intensively developed and used for the circulation of soldiers and supplies of all kinds, movements towards the battlefields and the conflicted territories. Tons of equipment (weapons, vehicles, etc…) and spare parts had to be brought to the front continuously. Not to mention fuel, food, clothes and ammunition. Especially during the Second World War (1939-1945), these practical needs for the circulation of soldiers and supplies spurred great theoretical developments in mathematics and planning. More specifically, the so-called Operational Research had its development closely linked to war logistics. The landing in Dunkirk, on the famous D-Day, led to the movement of millions of tons of supplies and hundreds of thousands of soldiers, coming from various places in the world, with forecasts of various alternative routes contemplating both armed actions of the enemy, as well as sabotages, equipment breaks or natural accidents.

Caio Prado Júnior’s analysis for Brazilian Colonization | Carlos César Almendra

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Carlos Cesar Almendra is a Professor of Sociology and Economic History at the University Centre of the Santo André Foundation (CUFSA), with a MBA from the Latin American Integration Programme (PROLAM/USP), close friend of Lívia Cotrim and student of José Chasin.

From: ALMENDRA, Carlos Cesar. A Análise de Caio Prado Júnior Para a Colonização Brasileira. Cadernos de Ciências Sociais (Porto de Ideias), v. 2, p. 273-290, 2011.

Translated by V. S. Conttren, January 2021. DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/U3Z9N. Available as a pdf here.

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Introduction

The purpose of this project is to introduce the book Formation of Contemporary Brazil—Colony (Formação do Brasil Contemporâneo—Colônia), by Caio Prado Jr., as a fundamental work for those who seek to understand the colonial past of Brazilian society. The book was published in 1942, definitively marking a new analytical approach, ignored by the various Brazilian thinkers until then: a Marxist reading of Brazilian colonial history.

Unlike the positivists, the Paulista thinker constantly oriented his analyses based on a vision of totality, that is, ontological, holistic. The chronological perspective, along with the author’s focus on an overall perspective, made possible the execution of a work of interpretation, which fled from any schematization or from a structural, mechanistic or linear economicism, on time. His concern in describing and defining the movement of the parts (regional conjunctures) throughout the whole of the national formation, resulted in a masterly manifestation concatenating it before global history. Such an undertaking challenges the forces of our thinkers to this day, especially those dedicated to rebuilding expressive totalities of Brazil’s past.

Marx: the Method of Political Economy as an Ontological Critique | Mario Duayer

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Mario Duayer was a professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who undertook a heavy task of translating Karl Marx’s works into Portuguese, while at the same time, arduously re-invigorating Marxian investigations through the theoretical developments produced by both Georg Lukács and Moishe Postone. Duayer has recently passed away in January 2021, due to the COVID pandemic, which has been allowed to devastate Brazil.

OLIVA, Antonio; OLIVA, ÁNGEL; NOVARA, Iván (eds.). Marx and Contemporary Critical Theory: the philosophy of real abstraction. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 113-129.

Translated by Anahí Prucca. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, January 2021. Available as a pdf here.

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Introduction

This chapter deals with the so-called question of the method in Marx. The debate around the methodological issues in the Marxist tradition are mainly based on the famous text entitled ‘The Method in Political Economy’, which appears in the introduction of the Grundrisse (Marx 2011a). Though unfinished and not published by the author, it constitutes the only work in which Marx deals explicitly with the issues relative to the method. It is then natural that it is the obligatory reference for the theoretical arguments on the Marxist method.

As the chapter consists in a critical contribution inside the Marxist tradition, it is worth warning, and not just for convention, that other dimensions of the work of the authors here mentioned are not being questioned: the critical commentaries concentrate only in their interpretations of the ‘Method…’, It is even important to recognize the value of these works in the divulgation of the Marxist text, as well as being of importance to enlarge and enrich important aspects which surge from it.

Selected Works of Michał Kalecki: Great War, Inflation and Fascism

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Transcribed by V. S. Conttren, March 2020. Hopefully with no great mistakes (revised April 2020; revised and expanded in May 2021 – DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/2RMES).

The articles chosen are present in the Collected Works of Michał Kalecki, volumes I to VII. Editor notes (transcribed from the Collected Works themselves) have been marked with “Ed. n.” Some of those, due to their length, have been turned into small addenda sub-chapters.

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1. 1. 1. 1. Remarks on Hitlerism and Business Spheres (1932)
         2. The World Financial Crisis (1931)
         3. Reduction of Wages during Crisis (1932)
         4. Is a ‘Capitalist’ Overcoming of the Crisis Possible? (1932)
         5. ‘New’ Industries and the Overcoming of a Crisis (1932)
         6. Foundations of the Manchurian Conflict (1932)
         7. War in the East (1932)
         8. The Business Cycle and Inflation (1932)
         9. On the Papen Plan (1932)
         10. Inflation and War (1932)
         11. On the Margin of Events in Germany (1932)
         12. The Present Phase of the World Crisis (1933)
         13. The Fate of Experiments (1934)
         14. The Business Cycle and Armaments (1935)
         15. Economic Aspects of West German Rearmament (1962)
         16. The Fascism of Our Times (1964)
         17. Vietnam and US Big Business (1967)

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Shackle: a tardia (e inútil) descoberta da teleologia pela ciência econômica | Mário Duayer

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“Professor adjunto da Universidade Federal Fluminense. Este ensaio é subproduto de um trabalho de pesquisa sobre os fundamentos filosóficos da teoria neoclássica.”

Extraído de CHASIN, José (ed.). Ensaio 17/18. São Paulo: Ensaio, 1989, pp. 347-369. Transcrito por V. S. Conttren, com menores correções ortográficas, Fevereiro 2020. Disponível em pdf aqui.

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O aspecto daquele solar e daqueles apartamentos, onde tudo tinha um odor de velhice e de mediocridade, o espetáculo oferecido por aquelas duas criaturas que pareciam ter dado à costa num rochedo de ouro, longe do mundo e das ideias que fazem viver, surpreendeu Augustina. Naquele momento, ela contemplava a segunda parte do quadro cujo começo a impressionara em casa dos Lebas, o de uma vida agitada, conquanto sem movimento, espécie de existência mecânica e instintiva, semelhante à dos castores.
Balzac

Em seu livro Epistemics & Economics: A critic of ecnoomics doctrines, G. L. S. Shackle centra suas baterias críticas exclusivamente contra o pensamento neoclássico, a despeito da maior amplitude anunciada pelo próprio título do livro. Consequentemente, sua crítica vem com a marca da mutilação desferida no objeto. Entretanto, tal reducionismo crítico torna-se inteligível tendo em vista o objetivo do autor. É que a crítica aos fundamentos filosóficos da teoria neoclássica cumpre a função de fornecer, por negação, os elementos com os quais o autor procura cravar os alicerces filosóficos do keynesianismo. Trata-se de uma malograda operação de distanciamento territorial dos neoclássicos tentada por Shackle. Pois nela mudam, se tanto, apenas as estacas; o solo (ontológico) permanece o mesmo.

Talvez se possa argumentar que a ousadia de qualificar de inócuo o empreendimento shackliano deve ser sustentada por algo mais do que um curto ensaio. De fato, inúmeras vezes ocorre que nem mesmo vastos tratados chegam para abalar as crenças mais fantásticas. Talvez porque estes casos envolvem outras coisas além da lógica do argumento (da ciência?). Para obviar assunto tão controverso, conceda-se as considerações que se seguem o caráter de indicações preliminares, extraídas de uma pesquisa mais ampla, ainda em execução. Assim, não se retira o juízo acima declarado e fica registrada a dívida, a ser resgatada por algo mais do que um ensaio. Com tal rodeio, fica estabelecido que este trabalho consiste de indicações para uma crítica da crítica do que este trabalho consiste de indicações para uma crítica da crítica de Shackle à noção de tempo na teoria neoclássica. O propósito aqui é de apreciar criticamente os lineamentos do pensamento do autor; nunca o de examinar em detalhe seu conteúdo e os desdobramentos deste decorrentes. Vale dizer, se o argumento desenvolve-se necessariamente num plano geral, isto não significa que se considere destituídos de interesse os aspectos específicos da obra analisada, mas sim que são secundários diante da centralidade da noção de tempo.

Lawyer’s Socialism | Frederick Engels

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MARX, Karl; ENGELS, Frederick. Marx & Engels: Collected Works, vol. 26, pp. 597-616, 2010. For the first time on the internet the full article written by Engels in collaboration with a young Kautsky is made available. Transcribed by V. S. Conttren with minor stylistic changes, October 2019.

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Stripped of all property in the means of production as a result of the transformation of the feudal into the capitalist mode of production and constantly reproduced by the mechanism of the capitalist mode of production in this hereditary state of propertylessness, the working class cannot adequately express its condition terms of the legal illusion of the bourgeoisie. It can only fully perceive this condition itself if it views things as they really are, without legally tinted spectacles. And it was enabled to do this by Marx with his materialist conception of history, with the proof that all of people’s legal, political, philosophical, religious, etc., ideas ultimately derive from their economic conditions, from the way in which they produce and exchange products. This set out the world view corresponding to the conditions of proletarian life and struggle; the workers’ lack of property could only be matched by corresponding lack of illusions. And this proletarian world view is now spreading throughout the world.

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Lawyer’s Socialism | by Frederick Engels

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The limits of industrialization | Raúl Prebisch

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From The Economic Development of Latin America.

Raúl Prebisch, 1950. Translated by ECLA.

 

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It is obvious that the economic growth of Latin America depends on the increase of the average income per inhabitant (which in most countries is extremely low) and on an increase in population.

An increase in the average income per inhabitant could be achieved in only two ways: first, through an increase in productivity; and second, assuming a certain level of productivity, through an increase in income per man engaged in primary production, in relation to the income of the industrial countries which import part of that production. This readjustment, as already explained, tends to correct the disparity in income brought about by the way in which the benefits of technical progress are distributed between the centres and the periphery. We shall now consider the increase in productivity in relation to the existing population. There are two aspects of the question.

On the one hand, the adoption of modern technique will allow production per man to increase, making labour available to increase production in the same activities in which it was already employed, or directing it to others. On the other, the index of productivity will also be raised by the diversion of persons ill-employed in activities where the very low productivity cannot be increased to any notable extent, to others where technical progress makes such improvement possible.

II. Economic aspects of the Cuban Revolution | Celso Furtado

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From Economic Development of Latin America,  1970.

Translated by Suzette Macedo and transcribed by V. S. Conttren. First part here.

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Redistributive stage of the Revolution

The 1959 revolution precipitated the course of events and impelled the country towards the second alternative at a spectacular pace. The reaction of the United States and the subsequent economic blockade of the island imposed by the Washington government, together with the support given to the new Cuban government by the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, caused events to move with incredible speed, changing the very essence of the range of options arising out of the country’s previous evolution. The revolution must be regarded as part of the formative process of the Cuban nation-state, a process that had begun with the country’s struggle for liberation from Spanish power. But the later course of the revolution cannot fully be understood without taking into account the fact that the last act of this liberation process was played out against the United States at the critical time when the balance of nuclear power called for a strict demarcation of the spheres of influence of the two super-powers. Thus, the international circumstances surrounding the Cuban Revolution came to play a decisive role in the course it was to follow.

From an economic point of view, the evolution of post-revolutionary Cuba can be divided into two periods. The first is marked by a policy designed to change the power structure and the distribution of income; the second by a concerted effort to bring about the country’s economic reconstruction.

I. Economic aspects of the Cuban Revolution | Celso Furtado

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From Economic Development of Latin America,  1970.

Translated by Suzette Macedo and transcribed by V. S. Conttren.

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Singularity of the traditional Cuban economy

Cuba displays a number of peculiarities worth analysing separately in an overall study of the Latin American framework. Along with Puerto Rico, the island remained under Spanish rule until the beginning of this century, the colonial period having lasted almost a century longer in this area than in the rest of Latin America. When the Cuban people’s struggle to win their independence created impediments to US trade, the United States government used the conflict as a pretext for taking over the remnants of Spain’s former Empire in the Americas and Asia. Consequently, the Cuban National State started its independent life under the occupation of United States forces. This occupation has not yet entirely come to an end—the United States government still has a base on Cuban territory—and up to 1934 it could have been extended to the whole island at any time, ‘in the interests of the Cuban people’ as adjudged by the President of the United States, in accordance with the provisions of the famous ‘Platt Amendment’. The delay of almost a century in starting the process of building a nation-state, and the particular circumstances attending its emergence under the tutelage of a powerful neighbour, make the Cuban process unique in the Latin American context. However, Cuba’s singularity lies even deeper and its roots are to be found in the economic evolution of the island within the framework of the Antillean region.

The Spaniards first used the Caribbean islands as defence bases for their lines of communication with the mainland colonies. The indigenous populations, living at a rudimentary cultural level, were practically wiped out and extensive stock farming was established on the larger islands to supply the metropolitan fleets. From the seventeenth century, the smaller islands were occupied by the French and the English, who wanted to secure a foothold for an assault on the mainland. With a view to eventual penetration of the Spanish Empire, they encouraged white colonization of the islands they had occupied, founding settlements of small planters who combined the growing of subsistence crops with the production of tobacco and indigo for the European market. These settlements, which had been of political value to the metropolitan countries because they could provide colonial militias¹ to be mobilized against the rich Spanish Empire, underwent profound changes during the latter part of the seventeenth century when the cultivation of sugar-cane was introduced into the islands by the Dutch settlers who had been driven out of the Brazilian Northeast. In fact, Dutch interests were responsible for developing sugar production in the Antilles. They financed sugar mills and the importation of slaves, provided technical assistance and guaranteed markets.

Capital formation in Latin America and the inflationary process | Raúl Prebisch

 

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From The Economic Development of Latin America and its principal problems

Raúl Prebisch, 1950. Translated by ECLA.

 

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The margin of savings depends ultimately upon the progressive increase of labour productivity. Though the level of productivity achieved by some Latin-American countries is such that, by means of a judicious policy, they would be able to reduce the amount of foreign capital needed to supplement national savings to moderate proportions, in the majority of them this capital is admittedly indispensable.

In actual fact, productivity in these countries is very low owing to lack of capital; and the lack of capital is due to the narrow margin of savings resulting from this low productivity. The temporary help of foreign capital is necessary if this vicious circle is to be broken without unduly restricting the present consumption of the masses, which, generally speaking, is very low. If this capital is effectively used, the increase in productivity will, in time, allow savings to accumulate which could be substituted for foreign capital in the new investments necessitated by new technical processes and the growth of the population.

1. “Critique to a Dualistic Reason: the platypus”, Francisco de Oliveira

This series will attain itself in the translation of Francisco de Oliveira’s “Critique to a Dualistic Reason: the platypus”. It will be used, for the translation, the 4th reprint of the author’s work (OLIVEIRA, Francisco de. Crítica à razão dualista: o ornitorrinco. São Paulo: Boitempo, 2013, primeira edição, quarta reimpressão). Notes from the translator will be identified with “T. N.” (translator’s note).

V. S. Conttren

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This essay was written as an attempt to answer the interdisciplinary questions drafted by CEBRAP [Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning] regarding the socioeconomic expansion of capitalism within Brazil. CEBRAP’s endowment for such a peculiar intellectual environment of discussion, favored the author’s endeavor. The author is thankful for the criticisms and suggestions from his colleagues, particularly José Arthur Giannotti, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Octavio Ianni, Paul Singer, Francisco Weffort, Juarez Brandão Lopez, Boris Fausto, Fábio Munhoz and Regis Andrade, as well as Caio Prado Jr. and Gabriel Bolaffi, who participated in seminars about the text. Any fault or error found in this document cannot be attributed to any of them, evidently.