Why Doesn't the Left Forum Want to Discuss
Reclaiming Marx's "Capital"?
A colleague of mine proposed an "Author Meets Critics" panel on my new book, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital": A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, to take place as part of the Left Forum conference in New York City, March 9-11, 2007.
He stressed that the panel would include a diverse array of speakers, mostly ones with a critical view of the book.
The Left Forum rejected this proposal.
The ostensible reasons were that the topic is too "abstract," and that the panel "didn't fit" with the rest of the program.
However, the program includes the following panel -- which the Left Forum itself sponsored:
New Interpretations of Marx’s Capital (LF)
(see http://leftforum.org/leftforum2007/panels.html)
David Laibman, Brooklyn College, CUNY (Chair)
Norman Levine, Institute of International Policy, “Marx's 1861-63 Foundational Outline for Das Kapital”
Frieder Otto Wolf, Sustainability Strategy Network, Berlin, “The ‘Order’ of Capital - Dialectical Presentation and Historico-empirical Grounding”
Max Fraad-Wolff, New School University, “Overdetermination and the Surplus Conception of Class: Building on and transforming Althusser’s Interpretation of Capital”
Michael R. Krätke, University of Amsterdam (Discussant)
I will leave it to you to judge whether this is less "abstract" than the topic of my book (or even a different topic), and whether the two panels fail to "fit" in with each other.
But what does one expect them to say?
"We want to continue the suppression of Marx's critique of political economy in its original form"?
"We don't want the allegations of inconsistency to be debated and, if disproved, retracted"?
Hardly.
But consider the LF's "Endorsing Organizations," which include:
Monthly Review, Science and Society, the Union for Radical Political Economics, and the Brecht Forum.
The founder of Monthly Review, Paul M. Sweezy, is criticized in the book for his instrumental role in propagating the false myth that Marx's Capital has been proven internally inconsistent.
The current editor of Science and Society, David Laibman, is criticized throughout the book for his role in keeping this myth alive.
The Union for [sic] Radical Political Economics publishes a journal the Review of Radical Political Economics, whose editorial board is dominated, on issues pertaining to Marx and value theory, by Sraffians and other physicalists who have done their utmost to keep the record from being set straight on the issue of internal inconsistency. What they have published on the issue in the last decade has certainly not been balanced. For instance, they publish paper after paper criticizing the claim that the temporal single-system interpretation of Marx's value theory has refuted the proofs of Marx's inconsistency, but not a single paper in recent years from the other side. They even banned me at one point from submitting anything to their journal! For more on this, click on the link.
A few years ago, the Brecht Forum banned me, without a hearing or prior warning, from teaching there. I and students in a seminar I was leading there objected to the BF's alteration, without any consultation or permission, of publicity for the seminar that we submitted. Among other things, their alternations changes the seminar title and made other changes that disguised the fact that it was a seminar on Vol. I of Marx's Capital. For more on this, click on the link. Please note that there are extensive interconnections between the Monthly Review crowd and the URPE crowd and the BF crowd.
Undoubtedly, there will be those who object to my bringing this to light on the ground that unity on the Left is needed. For more on this, click on the link.
But just who is hindering "unity"? If one wants unity, then why not unite -- bring together -- the critics of the myth of inconsistency with the advocates of the myth, and try to resolve the disagreement? If one wants unity, then why act to exclude dissenting views (e.g., on the allegations of inconsistency)? Above all, if one wants unity, then why level false charges of inconsistency against Marx, charges that act to justify the censorship of his critique of political economy in its original form?
Is the point to promote unity, or to suppress dissent?
It is tragic that some people make no distinction between unity and suppression of dissent.
It makes me afraid of the kind of "cooperative" society they would try (again!) to establish if they were to (re)gain state power.