Marx's Capital, vol.1, sec. 3-4 of ch. 25 & selections from Cohen's Marx's Theory of History

Questions

1. What is constant and variable capital? What is meant by organic constitution?

2. How does Cohen's account of functional explanation address Marx's claim that it is (historical) periodicity (p. 786) that creates the law-like necessity of capital's reproduction?

3. Is Cohen doing a necessary reconstruction of Marx's account of causality with his functional explanation?

4. Cohen claims Marx's identifies "two reasons for the contraction of the working day effected by the Factory Acts" (p. 294), but it seems that Marx's chapter of the working day has more than two (it is multilayered). How do we address this?

5. Does the industrial reserve army functions as a unifying mechanism? Or does it group different population whose unity as a functional mechanism requires further explanation?

6. What is the logic of Cohen's account of functional explanation in Marxism? Under what conditions does Cohen's interpretation makes sense? Does it make Marxist analysis useful, attractive, etc.? Under what conditions does it not? We can use the industrial reserve army as the example to address this.

7. How does this account of functional explanation differ or contrast from Durkheim's?

8. Is antagonism the/a function of the general laws of capitalism or is it the effect of various interests caused by (the laws of) capital?

Discussion

Cohen's says that "central Marxian explanations are functional, which means, very roughly, that the character of what is explained is determined by its effect on what explains it" (p. 278). 

Using examples of the Statute that "it cannot be explained by the circumstances of its origin, but only by reference to the persisting effect of legislation of that kind on the developing social structure" (p. 279).

It is not the origin but the "persisting effect," so in that sense it does map to Durkheim's claim that the origin does not explain.

                                    <-------Holidays into workdays------

Genesis of Capitalism ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––> Rise of Protestantism

                                                    <-------Effect of Legislation----------

Development of Social Structure ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––> Statute of Labourers

Explanans begets the explanandum and then explanandum has effect of explanans and that effect is what allows to persistence. Without the reinforcing effect there would be no persistence of the explanandum.

X persists because of capitalism that X itself serves. If it would serve to destroy capitalism, it wouldn't persist. 

Cohen mentions that functional explanations established a compatibility between "the causal power of the explained phenomena" (that is, the effect on the cause that originates it) and the explained phenomena's "secondary status in the order of explanation" (p. 278). This becomes a positive feedback loop.

This can be related to Marx's explanation of how, once social production is in a cycle, "effects become causes in their turn, and the various vicissitudes of the whole process, which always reproduces its own conditions, take on the form of periodicity" (p. 786).

                                         

                              Capitalist accumulation––––––––>Surplus populations

                                      (Explanans)                                (Explanandum)

There is an important passage to explain how effects become a cause: "if a surplus population of workers is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus population also becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalist accumulation, indeed it becomes a condition for the existence of the capitalist mode of production" (p. 784).

Functional explanations: where does it place the burden? The claim that "effects become causes" is not quite clear... 

 

One burden is if the explanandum has causal force then the specification of that causal force is at stake. (But is this needed for the functional explanation? Could there be more contributory factors? How many can you accept without losing functionalism?)