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Psychoanalyse und historischer Materialismus müssen koexistieren. Die soziale Welt läßt weder aus dem Bewußtsein noch aus dem Unbewußten der Subjekte sich erklären, die sie durch Arbeit zwar erzeugen und erhalten, aber das nicht wissen. Soziale »Tatbestände« wie das Wertgesetz, der imperialistische Krieg, der tendenzielle Fall der Profitrate oder die Überproduktionskrise lassen sich nicht auf die (stets sozial interpretierten, sei es legitimierten oder tabuierten Bedürfnisse von Individuen zurückführen. Kein Triebschicksal und keine Verdrängung macht den Kapitalismus und andere Produktionsweisen irgend verständlich. Umgekehrt lehrt die Kritik der politischen Ökonomie nichts darüber, wie die »Charaktermasken«, die die Personen als »Träger von bestimmten Klassenverhältnissen und Interessen« (Marx) überstülpen müssen, mit deren Trieben verlötet sind, nicht über Traum und Neurose. Daß Psychoanalyse und Kritik der politischen Ökonomie im ihnen gemeinsamen »Objekt«, dessen Eigentümlichkeit es ist, daß es Subjekt werden kann, zusammentreffen, ist ebenso gewiß wie ihre (einstweilen) unaufhebbare Differenz.

Dahmer, Helmut (1971): Psychoanalyse und historischer Materialismus, in: edition suhrkamp: Psychoanalyse als Sozialwissenschaft. Mit Beiträgen von Alfred Lorenzer/Helmut Dahmer/Klaus Horn/Karola Brede/Enno Schwanenberg, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., S. 64.

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An Abstract of A Treatise on Human Nature - Hume

 The celebrated Monsieur Leibnitz has observed it to be a defect in the common systems of logic, that they are very copious (=reichlich) when they explain the operations of the understanding in the forming of demonstrations, but are too concise when they treat of probabilities, and those other measures of evidence on which life and action intirely depend, and which are our guides in most of our philosophical speculations (S. 8)

Accordingly, wherever any idea is ambiguous, he has always scourse to the impression, which must render it clear an precise. If no impression can be produced, he concludes that the term is altogether insignificant. (S.11)

Beyond these three circumstances of contiguity, priority and constant conjunction, I can discover nothing in the cause of an effect. (S.12)

The inference from cause to effect is the nature of all our reasonings in the conduct of life; on this is founded all our belief in history; and from hence is derived all philosophy, excepting only geometry and arithmetic. ... It is no any thing that reason sees in the cause, which make us infer the effect. (S.13)

The mind can always conceive any effect to follow from any cause, and indeed any event to follow upon another; whatever we conceive is possible, at least in a metaphysical sense: but wherever a demonstration takes place, the contrary is impossible, and implies a contradiction. (S.13-14)

It follows that all reasonings concerning cause and effect, are founded on experience, and that all reasonings from experience are founded on the supposition, that the course of nature will continue uniformly the same (S.14-15)

All probable arguments are built on the supposition, that there is this conformity betwixt the future and the past, and therefore can never prove it. This conformity is a matter of fact, and if it must be proved, will admit of no proof but from experience. (S.15)

Tis not, therefore, reason, which is the guide of life, but custom. That alone determines the mind, in all instance, to suppose the future conformable to the past. However easy this step may seem, reason would never, to all eternity, be able to make it. (S.16)

But with regard to any matter of fact, however strong the proof may be from experience, I can always conceive the contrary, tho I cannot always believe it. (S.17)

My mind runs by habits from the visible object of one ball moving towards another, to the usual effect of motion in the second ball. It not only conceives that motion, bus feels something different in the conception of it from a mere reverie of the imagination. (S.18)

Belief in all matters of fact arrives only from custom, and is an idea conceived in a peculiar manner. (S.19)

S. 24 -25 : Kritik an Descartes keine Erfahrung der Dingen an sich

S. 25-27 Geometry Erfahrung a priori

For as it is by means of thought only that any thing operates upon our passions, and as these are the only ties of our thoughts, they are really to us the cement of the universe, and alle the operations of the mind must, in a great measure, depend on them. (S. 32)

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The Sraffian Methodenstreit and the revolution - Nuno Martins

A geometrical theory refers to an instant in time, and refers to a logical problem that must be solved by the theory of value. A mechanical theory, in contrast, refers to processes that happen in real time, in which causation is involved, and must be addressed through a theory of industrial fluctuations. This is also connected to the distinction between a difference between two instants (in which time is absent in each instant), and a change that takes place through time, which is also expressed in Joan Robinson’s distinction between logical time and historical time. (S. 5)

Sraffa thought that in order to understand human behaviour, one would have to be in close contact with the specific situation a given human being is facing.  Sraffa points out that he cannot conceive of the idea of being a king, for he has no idea of what it means to be involved in such a social position. On the contrary, Sraffa writes that he certainly can say something about being a lecturer, since he is familiar with such a situation. To better understand a social position, and the associated language game, to use Wittgenstein’s (1963) term, it is important to be a part of it, as in ethnographical research often undertaken within social or cultural anthropology, where the subject is involved with the community being studied. The emphasis is on historical context as opposed to universal economic theory deduced from universal psychological laws. (S. 7)

Sraffa told Wittgenstein that intuition, or subjective elements in general, are connected to a way of acting, and science is instead a way of knowing. For Sraffa, actions are an object of explanation, rather than something that requires a rational justification, as presupposed when explaining human behaviour in terms of whatever is regarded as rational behaviour. But this does not mean that one cannot draw upon Keynes’s contribution when addressing the human agent in connection to Sraffa’s objective and geometrical theory. While Keynes (1936) presents his theory in terms of psychological laws, I would argue that Keynes’ approach is ultimately underpinned by his view of human conventions, a view that is very different from the view that underpins the notion of rationality presupposed in the homo economicus. And human conventions refer to the more stable and persistent aspects of human behaviour, shaped by a given social and cultural context, as emphasised by ethnographers when studying a given community. So the ethnographical or anthropological mode of reasoning is not entirely disconnected from Keynes’s own approach. (S. 8)

The ethnographical or anthropological approach can also provide some guidance for finding out how to apply Sraffa’s geometrical method in the real world. If we want to apply the geometrical method to empirical reality, a possibility consists in finding an analogue of an instantaneous photograph that persists through time. A possibility in this regard is to look at a normal position, which depends upon human conventions that persist. However, the word ‘normal,’ in this context, can only mean ‘conventional,’ that is, the outcome of conventional human activity, rather than an equilibrium which would be itself explained through mathematical analysis. ... Gravitation does not take place in the logical time of mathematical models, which the classical authors did not even use, but rather in historical time in which multiple factors often preclude any possibility of exact measurement. (S. 9)

But in order to avoid confusing Sraffa’s geometrical theory with its possible application in historical time, we must distinguish two meanings for the term ‘average,’: (i) a ‘geometrical’ average pertaining to the properties of the (geometrical) Standard system; and (ii) an historical average which is an average through historical time, which is the sense in which ‘average’ is relevant for the classical authors from Smith to Ricardo. (S.11-12)

In fact, Sraffa goes as far as arguing that the average is a real entity, with an impact on human agents. This impact is felt on human conventions, which can be best understood through an ethnographical, or anthropological, approach, as noted above. The average is felt by human agents drawing on existing conventions, as the conventional, normal, or natural, situation. In some of his unpublished notes, Sraffa interprets Smith’s reference to natural prices as a reference to a purely physical relation, in the sense of a geometrical proportion. But there is no reason to believe that such a geometrical proportion cannot be found in historical time. Indeed, it is very clear that when Smith refers to ordinary or natural prices, for example, he refers to whatever is dictated by habit and custom. So only by allowing for the possibility of applying a geometrical theory to historical processes in the long-period would we be able to reconcile Sraffa’s interpretation of Smith with what Smith actually wrote. This interpretation of ‘natural’ in terms of ‘conventional’ is also shared by Antonio Gramsci: Human nature is the ensemble of social relations that determines a historically defined consciousness, and this consciousness indicates what is ‘natural’ and what is not [and human nature is contradictory because it is the ensemble of social relations]. People also speak of “second nature”; a certain habit becomes second nature, but was the “first nature” really “first”? Is there not in this commonsense mode of expression some indication of the historicity of human nature? (Gramsci, 2007, p. 321) This approach to what is ‘natural’ or ‘human nature’ is certainly in line with the ethnological or anthropological approach, in which human agency is understood in terms of specific historical context, which constitutes a real entity out of which averages are constructed. (S.13)

But once we see distribution as an exogenous aspect from the point of view of economic theory, to be determined by institutions, we can then study those institutions, and human conventions in general, from an historical, ethnographical and anthropological approach. (S.15)

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Welche Frage wird hier beantwortet und ist sie sinnvoll gestellt?

“Our age is the age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds of exemption from the examination of this tribunal. But, if they are exempted, they become the subjects of just suspicion, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination.”

— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

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“Verweis auf Irrationalität wäre nicht von selbst eins mit philosophischem Irrationalismus. Jene ist das Mal, das die unaufhebbare Nichtidentität von Subjekt und Objekt in der Erkenntnis hinterläßt, die durch die bloße Form des prädikativen Urteils Identität postuliert; auch die Hoffnung wider die Allmacht des subjektiven Begriffs. Aber Irrationalität bleibt dabei selbst wie er Funktion der ratio und Gegenstand ihrer Selbstkritik: das, was durchs Netz rutscht, wird durch dieses gefiltert. Auch die Philosopheme des Irrationalismus sind auf Begriffe verwiesen und damit auf ein rationales Moment, das ihnen inkompatibel wäre. Heidegger umgeht, womit fertig zu werden eines der Motive von Dialektik ist, indem er einen Standpunkt jenseits der Differenz von Subjekt und Objekt usurpiert, in welcher die Unangemessenheit der ratio ans Gedachte sich offenbart. Solcher Sprung jedoch mißlingt mit den Mitteln der Vernunft. Denken kann keine Position erobern, in der jene Trennung von Subjekt und Objekt unmittelbar verschwände, die in jeglichem Gedanken, in Denken selber liegt. Darum wird Heideggers Wahrheitsmoment auf weltanschaulichen Irrationalismus nivelliert. Philosophie erheischt heute wie zu Kants Zeiten Kritik der Vernunft durch diese, nicht deren Verbannung oder Abschaffung.”

— T.W. Adorno, Negative Dialektik, S. 91f. (via fundgruber)

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“Economy of time, to this all economy ultimately reduces itself.”

— Marx - Grundrisse 1857

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November 1927, D3/12/11: 40; E2.35

Time

Marshall’s “short or long periods”: how could he think of two simultaneous + different times for the same thing?

“Period of time” is simply the internal (or relation) between the cause and its effect. This is a definite not arbitrary [length] unit. The cause takes place at one point in time, the effect explodes all at once at a different point of time.

When Marshall says a tax [a rise in price] will have different effects on prices (or quantities produced) according as we “allow a long or a short period”, by “a tax” he is taking an arbitrary composite unit. He is in fact considering an enormous number of extremely small taxes: they all start simultaneously, but their effects take place at different points in time, but according to the nature of the different particles of matter to which they are applied: but each of the effects explodes at one point of time.

In fact time can only be thought as the relation between cause and effect.

There is one time for each thing: this time is discontinuous, it is formed by segments, the ends of which are ‒ an effect (end) of one is the cause (beginning) of another, the effect [(end)] of this becomes a cause (beginning) of the following….. and so on… ad infinitum?

No: lenght of period decreases in the progress as the square of….

(due to cumulative effects: effect is cause plus surplus)

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Integrationsparadox in der Rentnerrepublik

1. Integrationsparadox: nicht Einheit und Identität sind ein Zeichen für funktionierende Integration, sondern Konflikte über gesellschaftlichen Status (?) und Ressourcen(?) (relativ/absolut?).

2. Zwei Charakteristika der Rentnerrepublik sind das Fehlen einer Jugendkultur und ein in der Jugend verbreiteter und damit verbundener Narzissmus. 

Bedeutet der fehlende Generationenkonflikt in der Rentnerrepublik, dass sich daran Desintegrationseffekte anschließen?

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“A possible clue as to why Sraffa chose to write his 1960 book in such sparse prose, to give just enough information to allow the reader to establish each proposition each step of the argument on the way, may be found in the 1938 Keynes-Sraffa edition of Hume (1740). Hume wrote in his Preface that ‘my intentions are to render a larger work more intelligible to ordinary capacities, by abridging it…. those who are not accustomed to abstract reasoning, are apt to lose the thread of an argument, where it is drawn out at a great length … each part fortified with all the arguments … illustrated with all the views… Such readers will more readily apprehend a chain of reasoning, that is more simple and concise, where the chief propositions only are linked on to each other, illustrated by some simple examples, and confirmed by a few of the more forcible arguments. The parts lying nearer together can better be compared, and the connexion be more easily traced from the frrst principles to the last conclusion’. I am indebted to Peter Sallans for bringing this passage to my notice. Bob Dixon suggests that the example of Wittgenstein in the Tractatus may be another major reason. I recently (1980) asked Piero Sraffa about this interpretation. His reason was more prosaic than my suggested one: 'I don’t like writing, so I wrote the book in as few words as possible.’”

— G. C. Harcourt, The Sraffian Contribution: An Evaluation (1982) 

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“A certain maxim of Logic which I have called Pragmatism has recommended itself to me for diverse reasons and on sundry considerations. Having taken it as my guide for most of my thought, I find that as the years of my knowledge of it lengthen, my sense of the importance of it presses upon me more and more.”

— Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Maxim of Pragmatism”, The Essential Peirce, vol 2

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Kein Wesen kann zu Nichts zerfallen!

Das Ew'ge regt sich fort in allen,

Am Sein erhalte dich beglückt!

Das Sein ist ewig: denn Gesetze

Bewahren die lebend'gen Schätze,

Aus welchen sich das All geschmückt.

Das Wahre war schon längst gefunden,

Hat edle Geisterschaft verbunden;

Das alte Wahre, faß’ es an!

Verdank’ es, Erdensohn, dem Weisen,

Der ihr, die Sonne zu umkreisen,

Und dem Geschwister wies die Bahn.

Sofort nun wende dich nach innen,

Das Zentrum findest du dadrinnen,

Woran kein Edler zweifeln mag.

Wirst keine Regel da vermissen:

Denn das selbständige Gewissen

Ist Sonne deinem Sittentag.

Den Sinnen hast du dann zu trauen,

Kein Falsches lassen sie dich schauen,

Wenn dein Verstand dich wach erhält.

Mit frischem Blick bemerke freudig,

Und wandle sicher wie geschmeidig

Durch Auen reichbegabter Welt.

Genieße mäßig Füll und Segen,

Vernunft sei überall zugegen,

Wo Leben sich des Lebens freut.

Dann ist Vergangenheit beständig,

Das Künftige voraus lebendig,

Der Augenblick ist Ewigkeit.

Und war es endlich dir gelungen,

Und bist du vom Gefühl durchdrungen:

Was fruchtbar ist, allein ist wahr;

Du prüfst das allgemeine Walten,

Es wird nach seiner Weise schalten,

Geselle dich zur kleinsten Schar.

Und wie von alters her im stillen

Ein Liebewerk nach eignem Willen

Der Philosoph, der Dichter schuf,

So wirst du schönste Gunst erzielen:

Denn edlen Seelen vorzufühlen

Ist wünschenswertester Beruf.

J. W. Goethe - Vermächtnis

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November 1927, D3/12/11: 46, verso; E2.40.ii

But the question as to whether interest on fixed cap. is good or harmful cannot be left to arbitrary choice of length of period (but is it arbitrary?) yes, if continuous)

Ricardo’s cumulated interest.

But Warning: long + short period, rent or interest have meaning only in respect of future possibility of disinvest., not past

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Für Weber selbst fielen solche Antriebe nicht in den Bereich des wissenschaftlich Erschließbaren. Das Streben nach Illusionslosigkeit und Klarheit, das er der Wissenschaft zuordnet, diente ihm erklärtermaßen vor allem dazu, den Bezirk dessen zu ermitteln, was nicht wahrheitsfähig ist, sondern entschieden werden muss: persönlich wie kollektiv.

http://bit.ly/2zmUSQa