OscailtThe Marxist Paradox: An Anarchist CritiqueReview of Ronald D. Tabor, The Tyranny of Theory: A Contribution to the Anarchist Critique of Marxism (2013). 349 pages.2014-01-10T06:55:54+08:00Anarkismoanarkismoeditors@lists.riseup.nethttp://www.anarkismo.net/atomfullposts?story_id=26583http://www.anarkismo.net/graphics/feedlogo.gifFurther on Philosophy: Overdeterminationhttp://www.anarkismo.net/article/26583#comment153602014-01-10T06:55:54+08:00Wayne PriceAfter writing the above essay, I came across Richard D. Wolff & Stephen A. Resni...After writing the above essay, I came across Richard D. Wolff & Stephen A. Resnick, Economics: Marxian versus Neoclassical (1987; John Hopkins Univ. Press). In particular, R. Wolff is a Marxist economist who is known for his advocacy of workers' industrial self-management as opposed to nationalization. <br />
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The writers reject single-cause determinism, which they describe as a basic approach of neoclassical (bourgeois) economics. They write, "The Marxian theory presented here rejects any presumption that economic (or, for that matter, noneconomic) events have essential causes....[This] Marxian theory...will presume that any event occurs as the result--the effect--of everything else going on around that event and preceding that event. If we suppose that the world comprises an infinite number of events, then the occurrence of any one of them depends on the influences of all the others....Events thus always occur together, in relationships with one another.<br />
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"...In the Marxian tradition, this kind of logic was often referred to as 'dialectical' reasoning....We will use instead the newer, and we think more exact term, 'overdetermination' to refer to this Marxian notion of causation" (p. 19--20).<br />
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This does not deny that we can focus only on one or a limited number of factors ("causes") at a time, or that some factors may be stronger, more immediate, and more influential at any time or place. But it does mean that "no explanation, no matter what theory is used to produce it, is ever complete, total, or finished" (same). <br />
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This is not the usual interpretation of Marxist causation--not as upheld by classical social democratic or Stalinist Marxism. (I think "overdetermination" comes from psychoanalytic theory.) Ron would presumably argue that it is not what Marx and Engels had in mind. Since I am not a Marxist, I do not really care. What is significant to me is that these theorists believe that they can integrate this view with aspects of Marxism with which I agree, specifically the economic theory.