Critical Theory and Economics: Philosophical Notes on Contemporary Inequality

156 Pages·2023·1.594 MB·English

by  Robin Maialeh

Critical Theory and Economics
This book expands upon a range of economic insights within the overall context
of critical theory, particularly with respect to the question of socioeconomic
inequalities, and presents an explanation of how critical theory provides a
number of interesting perspectives for economists.
Economic agents, deliberately imprisoned in their instrumental rationality
as a means to survive under competitive relationships, are microscopic
constituents of systemic forces which exist beyond their will. Despite the
subjective rationality of such agents in terms of formally logical transitivity
and consistency, aggregate market distributional mechanisms also display
non-rational patterns. The crucial aspect of the dynamics of this system consists
of the paralysing effect of the high level of socioeconomic inequality, which is
driven by a permanent struggle for self-preservation under competitive rules;
it is a reminiscence of natural, uncivilised relationships that constituted the
reproduction process of the whole.
These reified agents thus become instruments of their socially constructed
powers on the one hand, and objects of their existential conditionality on the
other. Hence, the dialectical approach adopted by the author aims to uncover
the way in which structurally genetic market forces govern individual behaviour,
as well as how individual behaviour shapes these structurally genetic forces,
which, together, form the transcending principles of unequal distribution.
This book will be of particular interest to scholars of the political economy,
philosophy and the methodology of the social sciences, especially those
concerned with inequality issues. The preface for this book was written by
Professor Martin Jay.
Robin Maialeh, Director of Research Institute for Labour and Social Affairs,
Prague, Czech Republic.
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Laurent Dobuzinskis
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Heinz Welsch
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Critical Theory and Economics
Philosophical Notes on Contemporary Inequality
Robin Maialeh
Corporate Financialization
An Economic Sociology Perspective
Marcelo José do Carmo, Mário Sacomano Neto and Julio Cesar Donadone
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Frontiers-of-Political-Economy/book-series/SE0345
Critical Theory and
Economics
Philosophical Notes on
Contemporary Inequality
Robin Maialeh
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Robin Maialeh
The right of Robin Maialeh to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-367-22220-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-43782-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-27384-1 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429273841
Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book was partly supported by institutional
support for the long-term conceptual development
of the research organisation for the years 2018–2022
provided by MoLSA.

Contents
Preface ix
Introduction 1
1 Prolegomena to Critical Theory 5
The History of Critical Theory 5
Critical and Traditional Theory 11
Critical Theory and Economics 16
2 Prolegomena to Economic Theory 29
Foundations of Contemporary Economics 29
Distributional Theories 37
The Impotence of the Behavioural “Critique” 44
3 Dialectical-Critical Reflection 70
A Critique of Positivism: From Metaphysical Ontologism
to Mathematical Formalism 70
Dialectics as a Reaction to Positivism 78
Dialectical Totality and the Pseudoconcrete 84
4 Subject and Reason 93
Instrumental Reason and Contemporary Economics 93
Rational Attitude Towards Self-Preservation 97
Metamorphosis of the Subject and Its Objectification 101
viii Contents
5 Immanence and the Transcendence of Contemporary
Inequality 108
On the Worthiness of De-ontologised Positivism 108
Heteronomous Agents and the Transcendence
of the Market Economy 114
The Immanence of Unequal Distribution 124
Conclusion 135
Index 138
Preface
“The Revolution against Capital”, the provocative title of Antonio Gramsci’s
1917 essay on the Bolshevik Revolution, has become the canonical formula to
characterise the larger meaning of the revolutionaries’ audacity in overthrow-
ing the Russian autocracy. It signalled a paradigm shift in Marxist praxis, the
exercise of subjective will and collective action against the economic deter-
minism of the “orthodox” Marxists of the Second International, who waited
patiently for the ripening of “objective contradictions” to reach a crisis point
in the most advanced capitalist countries. Implying the “primacy of the politi-
cal” over the economic mode of production, it led to the adoption of a more
efficacious organisational model – the vanguard party – to accelerate the pace
of radical change.
The formula could, however, also be invoked to signify something very
different in the development of what came to be known as Western Marx-
ism. Here it referred to a shift of emphasis from political economy to cultural
critique in the larger totality of relations that explain the persistence of capital-
ism beyond its allegedly terminal crises. Over time, this “culturalist” turn in
Marxist theory led to a growing pessimism about the possibility of meaningful
political action as well as economic crisis in an ideologically permeated culture
that successfully integrates the victims of the capitalist mode of production into
the system that victimises them.
Gramsci himself sought heroically to combine the two meanings, remain-
ing a stalwart of the Italian Communist Party even during the incarceration
of his last years in Mussolini’s prison, while at the same time producing a rich
and detailed analysis of the ways in which the battle over cultural “hegemony”
would define class struggle in the 20th century. Other Western Marxists, how-
ever, most notably those who came to be known as “the Frankfurt School”,
gradually lost hope both in the explosive potential of the objective contradic-
tions of the capitalist economy and in the possibility of radical political action.
Not only had the militancy and solidarity of the working class waned as the
revolutionary moment receded into the past, but also the vanguard party, once
in power, had descended into an authoritarian dictatorship over the proletariat
(and everyone else under its rule).