by Andrew Kliman
Readers come away knowing what is distinctively Marx’s. — Richard Marshall
It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so. — Josh Billings
I
Richard Marshall, a retired secondary-school teacher in the London (UK) area, is known in academic philosophy circles for doing interviews with philosophers. Brian Leiter, a University of Chicago philosophy professor, lavished praise on Marshall’s Philosophy at 3:AM: Questions and Answers with 25 Top Philosophers—“almost sui generis … highly intelligent interviews … high-quality.”[1] Marshall recently reciprocated by lavishing praise on Leiter’s Marx (co-authored by Jaime Edwards), in a “thought piece” posted on September 14.
Marshall claimed that the book provides “a clarifying demolition of Marx’s labour theory of value, at least as a theory of price.” It ain’t so. The detailed analysis in my commentary on the book’s treatment of Marx’s economic thought, which appeared four days later, showed that “the book’s treatment of that topic is extremely flawed” and that “Edwards and Leiter[ …] know little about the subject they’re discussing.”
When I discovered his thought piece shortly after my commentary appeared, I sent him a link to the latter, thinking that he might be interested in knowing where he had erred. I certainly didn’t expect him to defend the book’s discussion of Marx’s economic thought against my critique, much less to defend it publicly, but that is what he has done. I suspect that the Dunning-Kruger effect—which, incidentally, is something that Brian Leiter frequently cites—is at work.
Marshall’s “answer” to me appears at the end of his September 14 thought piece. The “answer” is undated, but Marshall sent me an e-mail message on October 5 informing me that he had added it.
Where Marshall went wrong is that he unquestioningly believed what Edwards and Leiter said about Marx’s economic thought. There is no indication, in either his thought piece or his “answer,” that he did the research needed to confirm or disconfirm their claims. Since he apparently had no time for such research, he should also have had no time to believe what they wrote.
Below, I respond to most, but not all, of Marshall’s “answer.” It contains comments about topics in Edwards and Leiter’s book—ideology, freedom, and Stalin(ism)—that I need not respond to, since my commentary did not address those topics.
Richard Marshall
II
The first thing to note about Marshall’s “answer” to me is that it doesn’t quote or paraphrase anything I actually wrote. Instead, it makes insinuations—“[d]emanding that it become a treatise on the transformation problem or a blueprint for revolution,” “the charge that the book is evasive”—and so forth. Since Marshall’s characterizations aren’t accompanied by supporting evidence, some readers may doubt their accuracy. They would be right to do so.
Marshall begins his “answer” to me by stating that “[t]he book states its aim with clarity. It is a guide for students of philosophy to Marx’s central claims and the live disputes around them.” In the opening section of my commentary on the book, I said the same thing: “An introductory text, the book is clearly intended for philosophy students and for philosophy instructors who need to give a lecture or two on Marx. Mid-late 20th-century debates among (mostly) academic philosophers frame much of the discussion of Marx.”
Why does Marshall “answer” me by telling me the same thing that I myself said?! Intentionally or not, this opening move insinuates that I misunderstood the book’s genre, which lays the ground for his further insinuation, later in the paragraph, that my failure to understand what the book is about has induced me to “[d]emand[ ] that it become a treatise on the transformation problem.”
This implicit allegation is not only false. It is the exact opposite of what I argued in the opening section of my commentary:
Given the book’s genre and its intended audience, which is not especially interested in economic matters, my focus on criticizing what it says about value theory may seem like the humorous review of the movie Reds, by a dentist (starting at 0:16), that focused on criticizing the anachronistically “near-perfect dentition” of the main characters.
But I’m not assuming that what is important to me is important to everyone, or suggesting that it should be. On the contrary, I don’t think that the vast majority of philosophy students and philosophers need to know anything about Marx’s value theory. They don’t have time for the course of study they would need to understand it and judge it competently. Accordingly, they shouldn’t have time to believe anything about it, good, bad, or indifferent.
So I don’t think that a book like Edwards and Leiter’s needed to devote more than a few anodyne sentences to Marx’s value theory. In fact, it would have been prudent to refrain from saying more. The book would have avoided perpetuating error, and it would not have encouraged readers to know what ain’t so or to think they know what they don’t. [Emphasis added.]
Clearly, Marshall either didn’t read what I wrote and simply attributed to me what he “knows” I must be saying, or he purposely replaced what I actually wrote with a straw man. Whatever his motivation was, Marshall’s false version of what I said has made his task much easier and more pleasant. My commentary showed that Edwards and Leiter make numerous claims about Marx’s value theory that are simply false. It would be much harder and much less fun to address my arguments and evidence than it is to rebut a mythical opponent who demands that an introductory text for philosophy students “become a treatise on the transformation problem.”
III
In his thought piece on Edwards and Leiter’s book, Marshall said the following about their treatment of Marx’s economic thought:
Leiter’s scepticism pairs with a clarifying demolition of Marx’s labour theory of value, at least as a theory of price. As Leiter reconstructs it, Marx, following and revising Smith and Ricardo, wanted socially necessary labour time (direct and embodied in tools, machinery, logistics) to explain “production prices.” The project, especially in Capital’s third volume, fails. Neoclassical marginalism predicts prices better because it tracks demand and supply at the margin. Many Marxist economists concede as much whilst some try to reinterpret the value theory as something other than price theory, but Leiter thinks that misreads the aim of the Ricardian problem Marx set himself.
What falls with it? The strictly technical grounding of “exploitation” and the technical sense of “commodity fetishism”, which depends on value being labour in disguise. Yet the core critique does not fall. One can retain a plain-language concept of surplus – society produces beyond need leaving us with the question of who appropriates it – and a plain-language sense of fetishism as overinvestment of social power and aura in commodities, without pretending labour time explains price. More importantly, none of Marx’s central claims about capitalism’s dynamic require the value theory; the compulsion to cut costs, adopt labour-saving technology, and expand profit remains intact.
In his “answer” to my commentary on the book, Marshall fails to defend these claims. But he also fails to withdraw them. So I need to point out how my commentary refuted and challenged them.
Marshall’s key claims, in the first of the two paragraphs quoted above, paraphrase and endorse Edwards and Leiter’s misinterpretation of what Paul Sweezy said about prices of production.[2] Section 9 of my commentary showed that “Sweezy didn’t say anything even remotely like what they think he said.” A genuine answer to my commentary on this point would take up what Sweezy wrote, what Edwards and Leiter made of it, and my claim that they seriously misconstrued it. Marshall would either defend his original endorsement of Edwards and Leiter’s interpretation and the conclusion they drew from it, or he would retract it. He does none of that.
IV
As for Marshall’s broader claim that Edwards and Leiter’s book demolished Marx’s “labour theory of value” (at least as a theory of price), my commentary showed that it ain’t so. Specifically, it showed that
(1) Edwards and Leiter radically misinterpret the opening section of Capital;
(2) because of this misinterpretation, they falsely claim (in effect) that Marx’s theory says that commodities always exchange at their values, and that neither the values of commodities nor their prices are affected by utility considerations or demand;
(3) other textual evidence, which they construe as arguing that “demand’ is not an independent variable in [the] explanation” (p. 107) of commodities’ values, says nothing of the sort;
(4) in this case and in general, they force Marx’s value theory and neoclassical price theory into direct contradiction with one another (even regarding points on which the theories agree).[3] The resulting contradiction between labor-time and costs of production, on the one hand, and utility and demand, on the other, “falsifies the history of economic thought, and, as economic theory, … doesn’t get out of the starting gate”;
(5) their contention that “the labor theory of value cannot explain the production prices of commodities” is based solely on their radical misinterpretation of what Sweezy wrote (discussed above);
(6) their definition of “production price” (or price of production) is woefully inadequate, failing to distinguish prices of production from values, market prices, monopoly prices, regulated prices, and so on;
(7) perhaps for this reason, they “confuse and conflate commodities’ values with their prices of production, which leads them to claim, incorrectly, that Marx held that commodities tend on average to sell at their values, rather than at their prices of production”; and
(8) although they reject Marx’s value-theoretic argument as to why workers are exploited, they try to uphold his conclusion “by mimicking Marx’s argument but substituting production of physical products for creation of value[, … which] simply doesn’t work.”
Marshall’s “answer” fails to address these points (except point (8), to which I will return shortly). But if the criticisms listed above are correct (as they are), then the book is clearly not the “clarifying demolition of Marx’s labour theory of value” that Marshall said it is.
Adaptation of 1965 cartoon in Punch magazine by J.B. Handelsman
V
In the second of the two paragraphs of Marshall’s thought piece that I quoted in section III, he said that Edwards and Leiter’s “demolition” of Marx’s value theory doesn’t affect Marx’s “core critique” or his “central claims about capitalism’s dynamic.” This, too, just repeats what Edwards and Leiter themselves assert. As I noted in section 3 of my commentary, “[t]hey opine that, after we abandon the labor theory non grata, ‘what matters in Marx’s diagnosis of capitalism remains intact’ and, in particular, that ‘the core ideas of historical materialism … are not affected at all’ (p. 97).”
“But,” I asked, “what criteria do they employ to decide what matters? That is unclear to me. It is even unclear that they are employing criteria at all, instead of merely telling us what matters, subjectively, to them” (emphasis in original).[4]
Marshall has (maybe) read this response of mine, so he had the opportunity to reply to it in his “answer” to me. But he has not done so. To the contrary, he reiterates that “the book gives a clear and accurate map of Marx’s central claims”—full stop. So I must repeat myself as well: what criteria does he employ to decide which claims are “central” and which are not? Is he employing criteria at all, or merely telling us what is “central” to him? And why does he (like Edwards and Leiter) decline to inform readers about what Marx himself considered “central,” how his view differs from Marx’s, and why there are differences? “Was [Marx] just plain wrong? Or are the differences regarding what matters rooted in different interests, aims, politics, philosophical commitments, and so forth?”
VI
As I noted, Marshall’s “answer” does address my point (8) above, regarding exploitation. He says that Edwards and Leiter’s
presentation keeps both the value theoretic and the ordinary language threads in view. In value terms[,] surplus value depends on the difference between the value of labour power and the value produced during the working day. In ordinary terms[,] the system consumes workers’ time and appropriates the difference that their activity creates. The latter is pedagogy for newcomers. It is not a retreat from the former.
What Marshall has done here, without acknowledging that he has done so, is contradict what he wrote originally, in his thought piece on the book. What he said originally is:
What falls with [Marx’s value theory]? The strictly technical grounding of “exploitation” …. Yet … [o]ne can retain a plain-language concept of surplus — society produces beyond need leaving us with the question of who appropriates it … without pretending labour time explains price.
Marshall’s original statement indicated that the “strictly technical grounding of ‘exploitation’” relies on Marx’s value theory while the so-called “plain-language” concept does not. Hence, the two concepts are substantively different. By asserting that the “plain-language” concept is merely “pedagogy for newcomers,” rather than a substantively different concept, Marshall’s “answer” contradicts what he said originally.
Furthermore, what he said originally was right while his revised position is wrong; the “plain-language” concept is not merely “pedagogy for newcomers.” While the term surplus is ambiguous—it can refer to an amount of value or, instead, to a physical surplus—it cannot refer to both at once, because “surplus-value” and “physical surplus” are not synonymous. Accordingly, the term exploitation can refer to creation of surplus-value or to production of a physical surplus, but not both at once, because these concepts are also not synonymous.[5] Edwards and Leiter understand clearly (as did Marshall, originally) that the two concepts differ. Thus, they suggest that “Marx’s technical notion of exploitation deriving from the labor theory of value falls apart” but that “[o]ther senses of ‘exploitation’ … remain intact” (p. 118). In other words, what (allegedly) remains intact are alternatives to Marx’s own “notion of exploitation”—“other senses”—not plain-language restatements of it.
But Edwards and Leiter are wrong when they suggest that the physicalist notion of exploitation that they endorse remains intact. As I showed in section 10 of my commentary, “mimicking Marx’s argument but substituting production of physical products for creation of value … simply doesn’t work.” It “turn[s] out to depend crucially on the … demonstrably false idea that labor is the exclusive source of new physical products!”
As we have seen, Marshall has chosen not to defend Edwards and Leiter’s notion of exploitation (which was originally his own notion as well) against this critique of mine. But he also refrains from repudiating it. Instead, he tells us that when Edwards and Leiter say that “Marx’s technical notion of exploitation deriving from the labor theory of value falls apart,” and offer an alternative to it, what they are actually arguing is that “surplus value depends on the difference between the value of labour power and the value produced during the working day.”
I think this will come as news to them. And I’m sure they’ll be delighted.
VII
In the paragraph of his “answer” that begins “On value and price,” Marshall writes, “One can grant a role for demand in market prices while still seeing the point of Marx’s analysis of the social form of exploitation.” This sentence insinuates that Marx himself failed to recognize that demand is a determinant of market prices. It is another reason I have doubts that Marshall actually read my commentary on the book. In section 5, I quoted two instances in which even Edwards and Leiter acknowledge that “Marx understood that ‘market’ prices reflect ‘supply and demand” (p. 105). I then said that “[h]e also understood that demand is sometimes a determinant of commodities’ values (and their prices of production)” (emphasis in original). And in section 8, I explained in detail how, according to Marx’s theory, the magnitudes of values and prices of production are affected by demand, and why this does not contradict his tenet that commodities’ values are determined exclusively by the amounts of labor needed to produce them.
VIII
Near the end of his “answer,” Marshall insinuates that I claimed that Edwards and Leiter’s book is evasive: “Finally the charge that the book is evasive because it does not pick a single technical school mistakes prudence for weakness.” This is so far off the mark that I have no idea what he’s referring to. Nowhere did I say or suggest that the book is evasive. And as I noted above, I said at the outset that “it would have been prudent” for Edwards and Leiter to refrain from “devot[ing] more than a few anodyne sentences to Marx’s value theory.” This implies, among other things, that it would have been prudent to refrain from “pick[ing] a single technical school.”[6]
My best guess is that what Marshall means by “the charge that the book is evasive” is the following statement, in section 9 of my commentary:
But if commodities tend on average to sell at their values, what is the meaning of the statement that values are transformed into prices of production? What is the difference between the values and these prices into which they are transformed? Edwards and Leiter do not say. They tell us that “Marx’s labor theory of value cannot explain production prices” (p. 109), but because they lack a clear definition of prices of production, and confuse and conflate them with values, they do not and cannot answer the question, “What is it, exactly, that requires explanation?”
Perhaps Marshall has construed my statement that “Edwards and Leiter do not say” as a charge that they were being evasive. It is not. My point was that they fail to provide answers because they don’t know what they’re talking about, not because they were evading anything.
Jaime Edwards and Brian Leiter, Marx. Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2025.
IX
On the issue of what Marx’s materialist conception of history, or historical materialism, implies regarding China’s economic development, Marshall makes a number of general comments that do not require a response. Finally, he gets to the point, writing that Edwards and Leiter’s book
notes Marx’s late openness to non[-]standard paths if two conditions held. First, a near contemporaneous revolution in the advanced West. Second, local institutions capable of being repurposed. Those conditions did not obtain. The path actually taken combined marketisation with party control and delivered the rapid productivity gains Marx thought necessary for any higher form of social life. Saying that this pattern fits Marx’s mechanism does not endorse the present form of Chinese state capitalism.
What Marshall leaves out of this summary is the fact that Edwards and Leiter did not merely say that Chinese economic development “fits Marx’s mechanism.” They also said that
the massive growth in productive power in communist China only occurred after Mao’s death and the “market” reforms of Deng Xiaoping. … Fortunately for hundreds of millions of Chinese, Deng assumed power after Mao. Marx’s theory of historical materialism would have sided with Deng, since China, given the state of its productive forces, desperately need [sic] capitalist relations of production” (p. 48, emphases added).
The conclusion I drew from this statement—not from any supposed mechanism-fitting—is that Edwards and Leiter “think that ‘Marx’s theory of historical materialism’ implies that … support for the economic policy of a faction of China’s capitalist ruling class is warranted.” This is so close to what they wrote that I should perhaps call it a paraphrase rather than a conclusion. Unless Marshall can explain to us the huge difference between siding with Deng’s economic policy and supporting it (!), he has no basis for insinuating that what I wrote is inaccurate.
Beijing, June 5, 1989, after the Tiananmen Massacre. Refusing to side with Deng, the “Tank Man” (lower left) prevents the column of tanks from advancing.
X
The rest of what Marshall is doing in his comment on China’s economic development is interesting, because it illustrates nicely some key differences between the way that revolutionaries think and the way that anti-revolutionaries like Marshall think. Although his argument skips steps, it is pretty clear that he is trying to defend Edward and Leiter’s conclusion that “Marx’s theory of historical materialism would have sided with Deng.” He helps them out by supplying them with an argument that they themselves did not make.
They “deduced” their conclusion directly—without any intervening argument—from the fact that, in Marx’s view, “capitalist relations of production are essential for the maximal development of productive power in human societies” (p. 48). However, as I noted in my commentary,
Edwards and Leiter’s pro-capitalist conclusions are not straightforward deductions from historical materialism as such. They depend crucially on a further premise that Edwards and Leiter have implicitly added: that every country must develop on its own, in isolation, independently of the others. [Emphasis in original.]
Now, Marshall’s reference to “Marx’s late openness to non[-]standard paths” is an acknowledgement that I was right when I said that Marx explicitly rejected the idea that every country must develop in isolation and must therefore pass through a capitalist stage of development. Given what Marshall calls “a near contemporaneous revolution in the advanced West,” Marx argued that technologically less-developed countries may be able to bypass the capitalist stage and advance to socialism directly, in partnership with technologically developed countries, on the basis of the high level of productivity that has already been achieved in the latter countries.[7]
So, to get from Marx’s premise (capitalist economic development is a necessary precondition for humanity’s advance to socialism) to Edwards and Leiter’s conclusion (“Marx’s theory of historical materialism would have sided with Deng”), Marshall argues that Marx’s reasoning regarding the bypassing of capitalism does not apply to China: “Those conditions did not obtain.” Hence, Marx’s theory of historical materialism would have sided with Deng. Case closed.
Not so fast. Note, first, that Marshall’s argument contains a glaring logical error. He denies the antecedent. “[I]f two conditions held,” then Marx was open to “non[-]standard paths” (i.e., the bypassing of the capitalist stage). The two conditions did not hold in the case of China. “Therefore” Marx would not have been open to “non[-]standard paths” in the case of China.
This is like saying, “If you are a mechanic, you have a job. You are not a mechanic. Therefore, you do not have a job.”
In other words, while Marx actually said that certain conditions make it possible for countries to bypass the capitalist stage, Marshall’s “Marx” said that the absence of certain conditions makes it impossible for countries to bypass the capitalist stage. These are two entirely different things. Imagine that, in late 19th-century Russia, there had been no rural commune form (which is presumably what Marshall means by “local institutions capable of being repurposed”). Is it plausible that Marx would then have told the Russian people, “Tough luck, rebyata. You don’t have what it takes. Even if there is social revolution in the technologically advanced countries, you must endure the frightful vicissitudes of capitalist development”? I can easily imagine that Marshall, and Edwards and Leiter, would have said this. But Marx was a revolutionary dialectician. He wanted to change the world, not accommodate himself to what currently exists. I think it is far more plausible that he would have searched for other ways for Russia to bypass the capitalist stage.
Second, while Marshall’s argument is about what did and didn’t actually occur, Marx’s was about something quite different—what is possible. To make the case that it was not possible for China to bypass the capitalist stage of development, Marshall has to do a lot more than tell us that there was not “a near contemporaneous revolution in the advanced West [… and] local institutions capable of being repurposed.” He has to demonstrate that these things were impossible.
Third, what is at issue here is what Marx (or “Marx’s theory of historical materialism”) would have said, not what Marshall thinks or Edwards and Leiter think. Thus, Marshall would need to make a compelling case that Marx himself would have agreed that it was not possible for China to bypass the stage of capitalist development (because he would have agreed that revolution in the technologically advanced countries wasn’t possible, etc.).
And what then? Assuming for the sake of argument that Marshall could show that Marx would have agreed that capitalist development of China is unavoidable, this still would not get him to the desired conclusion that “Marx’s theory of historical materialism would have sided with Deng.” Realistic revolutionaries recognize that not every battle can be won, but that doesn’t mean that we accommodate ourselves to what exists and side with the class enemy. So I think it is far more plausible that Marx would have denounced the Deng regime and its economic policies, even if its rule was unavoidable, and that he would have hailed the Tiananmen Uprising and the many other heroic struggles of Chinese workers, peasants, and youth that have kept the idea of human freedom alive, even if it could not be realized in their day.
Notes
[1] Leiter’s blurb appears in the “Editorial Reviews” section of the linked book page.
[2] Edwards and Leiter wrote that “the consensus view among Marxist economists is that there is no solution to Marx’s transformation problem (i.e., the labor theory of value fails). We can agree with Sweezy that if what we want to understand is only ‘the behavior of the disparate elements of the economic system (prices of individual commodities, profits of particular capitalists, the combination of productive factors in the individual firm, etc.),’ then neoclassical ‘price theory [marginal utility theory] … is more useful in this sphere than anything to be found in Marx or his followers’ (1970: 129). We may, in short, adjudge the Marxian attempt to solve the ‘transformation problem’ a failure: the labor theory of value cannot explain the production prices of commodities” (p. 105; the interior quotes come from p. 129 of Sweezy’s book; the insertion in square brackets is Edwards and Leiter’s).
[3] For this reason, Marshall is wrong when he says in his “answer” that “[r]eaders come away knowing what is distinctively Marx’s.”
[4] It is a striking fact about Edward and Leiter’s book and other works of the same ilk (including Marshall’s) that the aspects of Marx’s work that are said to fall and fail just happen to be ones that the authors don’t like, while the aspects that are said to remain intact just happen to be ones that they do like. What a convenient coincidence!
[5] The following example suffices to establish the difference. “[I]magine a farmworker who ‘live[s] on air’… and thus receives no corn-wages, but nonetheless toils under the hot sun throughout the year. Clearly all of her labor is surplus labor––labor for which she receives no equivalent.” Thus, according to Marx’s theory, surplus-value is created, since surplus-value is the monetary expression of the surplus labor. “Yet if the farmworker planted 100 bushels of seed corn at the start of the year but, owing to bad weather, only harvested 99 bushels at the end, then [the physical surplus] … is 99 bushels – 100 bushels = –1 bushel” (Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, p. 178).
[6] There are several additional places in Marshall’s “answer” in which he insinuates that I criticized the book for not taking sides, for failing to “settle every technical controversy,” for refraining from “an adjudication of one technical reconstruction of price formation,” and so on. Thus, I repeat: my criticism—that Edwards and Leiter failed to limit themselves to a few anodyne sentences about matters they know very little about—is the exact opposite of what Marshall insinuates it is.
[7] See Marx’s correspondence with Vera Zasulich and section 2 of my commentary on Edwards and Leiter’s book.
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