Rationality and Irrationality in Economics by Maurice Godelier

Author:Maurice Godelier [Godelier, Maurice]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-78168-037-7
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

In this way the logical connexion between categories also reveals the structure of the development of the economic process in time. The pace of the process depends on the functional relations between economic structures forming a unified whole; in concrete historical reality, however, time has two directions, two vectors at once, a successive order and a simultaneous order. A capitalist enterprise functions in accordance with a successive order, but this is modified because:

(a) a capitalist enterprise always effects several simultaneous rotations of capital. Micro-economic analysis becomes much more complex and requires a more developed model (cf. Volume II, chapter 15, of Capital, on the effect of the time of turnover on the magnitude of advanced capital);

(b) a capitalist enterprise always exists in relation to the total functioning of social capital. Now at the overall social level, all the phases of a particular process are realized simultaneously. At any given moment, production, circulation, exchange, etc., are all taking place. On the macro-economic plane the method needs to be modified. Besides, since, at any given moment, production, circulation, etc., set in motion total quantities of products or of money, the macro-economic method can be developed on the plane of calculation. At the same time, however, as we shall see, analysis is led more and more towards employing the dialectical approach that grasps reality as a totality. We see again the conceptual approach interlinked with mathematical calculation, all within a macro-economic method that aims at approximating to reality.

We see also that economic theory, in order to picture reality, has to utilize the two methods, micro-economic and macro-economic, at the same time, but not in the same place; when the model needs to rejoin reality, the macro-economic methods has to take the place of the micro-economic. This replacement is dictated by the actual content of reality, for in the capitalist system a ‘single’ capitalist enterprise does not exist as such – it exists only as one element in a larger whole.

We see, then, why the categories were presented in Capital in a certain order. But we have not yet explained the actual starting-point of the theory, namely, the analysis of the category, ‘commodity’. We began with the ‘logical’ starting-point, that is, the moment at which surplus-value is born, in order to understand the reference back of the other structures to this one: but this moment is not the starting-point of the theory.

Whereas the moment of birth of surplus-value leads us to move from production to what is produced, which seems logical, we now notice that the moment of production was itself analysed after what is produced, namely, the commodity. Why this order? Is this a fault in construction that contradicts the rigour we have hitherto observed in Marx’s theory? If we can establish the necessity of this starting-point, we shall have explained the entire process of construction of the theory and defined the last aspect of this ‘ideal genesis’ of capitalism.

In fact, it is analysis of the category ‘commodity’ that alone makes possible an understanding of the unity and sense of the capitalist system of production.

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