4.6.12
SCIENTIST, MORE THAN A RESEARCHER AND SPECIALIST
Anglophone university tradition has reduced science to research and specialism. Hence its main purpose has been to produce researcher-specialist who uses theory and history only as a introduction to his/her inquiry.
Academic studies start with thesis or hypothesis, around which all material is collected and processed.
Candidate of academic title and diploma is just expected to conduct a " scientific study" by following a research procedure stated above.
Theory and history are simply instruments to start the scientific inquiry. Success is guaranteed when researcher has justified his/her thesis or initial claims.
Such a tradition of "science" is empirical, which is seen in its "case study" approach. Cases are seemingly assumed to close the gap between theory and practice.
Here are my suggestions and arguments:
1) Thesis cannot be claimed first and then justified. But, the subject under study should be discussed, explained, handled, evaluated and in every step, theses and justifications should be followed to present new theses and objections. Thesis writing process should be a creative, intellectual journey. As Marx says, "there is no royal path to scientific inquiry".
2) Specialization should be followed by the other specializations. Scientist is not simply a specialist. Science is the totality of specializations and researches.
3) Scientist is first either a social scientists or a natural scientist and second, above all, a scientist. He/she is also specialist on certain, several areas of scientific inquiry.
4) An academics stands between researcher-specialist and intellectual-philosopher-theorist. Scientist gets closer to the second part.
5) Scientist does not only teaches but also circulates his/her conclusions, theses, evaluations.
6) University professor (they all are called scientists erroneously ) is socially responsible, ethical person, who cannot be simply a careerist, isolated one, since science is not simply a career and individual aspiration.
Science is social, political, ideological.
A real scientist does not simply do research, teach and follows a career. He/she fulfills a social, political, ideological function.
But does he/she know it?
STREAM OF CONNECTIONS THROUGH POWER, TIME, SPACE AND VALUE
Ercan Gundogan, Stream of Connections through Power, Time, Space and Value, (Second revised and extended edition), (2012 January, Lap Lambert), ISBN 978-3-8465-9769-9
STREAM OF CONNECTIONS THROUGH
POWER, TIME, SPACE AND VALUE
Second
revised and extended edition
Ercan Gündoğan
For
Nesrin
CONTENT
PREFACE TO THE
SECOND EDITION
I
suggested in the first edition that dialectics was also a form of stream of consciousness
mode of thinking and presentation. However, I forgot saying that not all stream
of consciousness were necessarily dialectical. Therefore, my connections were
not been suggested by following strict dialectical logical coherence. Dialectics
is the subject of my coming book “Social Dialectics”, which will complete
“Stream of Connections” and be out in coming months. I would like to note that
my stream of connections might seem to contradict in many sections with several
classical Marxist theses and arguments such as the position of value in history.
However, I think that a strict and refined dialectical analysis can be
constructed upon the stream of consciousness, which prepares all materials for
it and cannot escape from many seemingly incoherent surface appearances. As for
the labour theory of value, it is assumed that value category is confined to
the period of the capitalist mode of production. Well-known outstanding Marxist
political scientist and philosopher Bertell Ollman already pointed to this
problem in his message, which was the first feedback to the book:
11 July 2011
Hello-
Greetings.
Your new book looks very interesting, but you don't tell us where / how we can
get a copy. I know that one shouldn't draw too many conclusions about your book
from the table of contents, a few lines of introduction, and the authors you
mention, but it does indicate that our views on dialectics have a lot in
common. This does lead me, however, to ask you one question about your title:
does the inclusion of "value", which Marx applies almost exclusively
to the period of capitalism, alongside of "power", which applies to
the whole of human history, and "time" and "space", which
apply to the entire history of the planet, suggest that the
"connections" you trace crisscross - as it seems - developments on
all these different scales? If so, this is not the best way to uncover the
special dynamics (laws?) that occur on each one. I would be interested in
hearing your thoughts on this.
In
Solidarity Bertell Ollman
Author
of DANCE OF THE DIALECTIC: STEPS IN MARX'S METHOD,
ALIENATION
12 July
2011
Dear
Professor, Comrade, Bertell Ollman,
Thank you
so much for your message having a critical question.
My first
two books are available in all amazons and the new one will be there in coming
days. However, morebooks.de,
below, circulates now.
https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/stream-of-connections-through-power,-time,-space-and-value/isbn/978-3-639-36991-5
https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/marxian-theory-and-socialism-in-turkey/isbn/978-3-639-13607-4
https://www.morebooks.de/store/gb/book/a-theory-of-capitalist-urbanisation:-david-harvey/isbn/978-3-639-17686-5
As for
your question regarding value and Marx's conception of it in the limited
theoretical context of the capitalist m of p., I want to share one of my
observations about Marx's all Capital with you. As all Marxists know, Marx sees
the emergence of value conception as a result of the tarnsformation of all
necessary plus surplus labour and product into wage plus profit, rent and
interest categories.Surplus product becomes surplus value. These are well known.
However,
value as a social calculation to compare and exchange products, I can
argue, exists in all exchanges from barter to modern market economy. I
suggest that whenever money appears for exchange, there must be a value
conception, which appears only in its perfect and cyristialised form under
capitalism.
Once this
definition is made, the gap between Marx's theory of historical materism and
theory of cmp, which exists as you can agree with me, can be closed. The
origin of this idea of mine stems from my analysis of capital in which for Marx
surplus and surplus value rathern than profit and its variants,
is everything for exploiters. Therefore, not exclusively value and profit,
but category of surplus in any kind matters more. For the analysis of capital
and capitalism, we already do not lose anything.
Another
observation of mine is that Marx assumes in his all Capital that surplus value
is appropriated as whole first by the industrial capitalist and out of which
interest and rent are paid to other capitalists. I realised that Marx also must
have assumed that industrial profit was higher than the totality of interest
and rent. In my recent two articles, one of which is under review now, and the
other was added to the last part of my book, I focus on this problem.
Meanwhile,
although I read and write in English, native English readers sometimes cannot
follow my arguments easily. However, I hope you can.
I also
hope I could answer you a little bit.
Best
Ercan
Gündoğan
The
second edition corrected technical mistakes, revised many sentences and
paragraphs, and includes a section about “re-conceptualization of the internal
contradictions of capital” as a part of previously published section on the
future of capital and value of futures.
Introduction
of the first edition was rather short and did not have a summary of the
arguments. It was short because I tried to develop many theses, formulations
and even laws within the general theory of Marxism. Its content already shows
the complexity of the problem, which is nothing but the development of a grand
theory of Marxist socialism that can see all connections between individual and
social, and between local and global contexts of political power, time and history,
space and geography and surplus product and surplus value. The book is not a
new attempt to spatialize social phenomena or to insert space to it. It from
the outset accepts that space is not external to time and social being. Our
bodies, machines, built environment and nature are not external to our minds,
labour, everyday life and social organization. The question is not the
spatialization of time and history, but revealing the dialectic relations
between time and space. That external conception follows a dualist approach
rather than dialectics either by translating the language of time and history
to the language of space and geography or inserting space and geography to the
container of time and history, in other words, filling it with space and
geography.
That
external and dualist approach ironically has been based on the earlier attempts
to supersede the division between time and space in theory and practice. On the
ground of urban social movements and social uprisings in the 196os and 1970s, Manuel
Castells’ famous study The Urban Question,
Henri Lefebvre’s works on space and then David Harvey’s very influential book Social Justice and the City took theoretical
attentions to urban social space. Harvey also established first theoretical
connections between Marxist political economy and urban space. Especially
thanks to him, we have now prestigious and productive Marxist studies on social
geography in many faculties in the world.
Nevertheless,
despite all successes, epoch-making studies and masterpieces, the connections
between individual and society and between local and global spaces are still
seen only through the mediation of value relations, in other words, labour
process. This is correct, but not adequate for a grand theory of Marxist
socialism. The ultimate source of surplus value is production, but its
extraction and appropriation can be realized from nearly everywhere. Hence, power
has many sources and forms and can be gained from all contradictory relations
that create inequality. For more powerful
Marxist theory, power in any kind is
an authentic problematic or to say, paradigm. As for surplus value, it should
be seen only as a specific and limited form of surplus product, which is more
substantial and historical. Furthermore, the book does not see value as being
confined only to capitalist system. Even for Marx, the questions are how social
wealth is produced by many and appropriated by few in a class-divided society in general and the history that is the
history of class struggles. It is nothing but the class struggles for power.
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