What kind of theory is Marx's Labour Theory of Value? A critical realist inquiry

Capital & Class, Spring 2001 by Fleetwood, Steve

In what follows, the central features of the deductivist mode of theorisation are clearly stated so that, step by step, the ontology that renders these features intelligible is identified. Once identified the inappropriateness of this ontology can be ascertained and, furthermore, the way is prepared (in section 1.4) for an elaboration of the alternative, and by contrast appropriate, ontology that roots the causal-explanatory mode of theorisation.

Central to the way the deductivist mode of theorising is operationalised are functional relations, generalised as y = f(x). These can also be expressed as laws and styled 'whenever event x then event y'.

If functional relations and laws are to have economic meaning (as opposed to 'mere' mathematical meaning) then they must imply causality. Causality renders them intelligible. The clear implication, for example, of writing, q =f(p) is that the quantity (demanded or supplied) varies with, and is caused to vary by, price.

Functional relations and laws are not, however, rendered intelligible by just any account of causality, but by one based upon constant conjunctions of events, and deriving from Hume.12 The use of this notion of causality might arise from a conscious decision, or it might arise by default, because other notions of causality that involve, for example, transfactually acting mechanisms and powers (see section 1.3) would render functional relations and laws unintelligible. Laws as constant conjunctions of events are, thereby, referred to as 'Humean.'

If, one were to discover a constant conjunction of events in the form of a Humean law or functional relation, one might claim to have scientific knowledge. This is because it is the constant conjunction of events that makes possible the deduction or prediction of some events) from antecedents. Crucially, then, constant conjunctions of events drive the nomological machinery of the deductivist mode of theorising.

Scientific knowledge in the form of constant conjunctions of events is only intelligible on the presumption that particular knowledge is derived via experiencing, and subsequently recording unique, individual, or atomistic events. These events cannot be other than atomistic, since any connection or relation between them would be impervious to sense experience, otherwise the nature of the connections would require prior explanation, thus undermining the explanatory power of sense experience. The ontology, implicit or explicit, is, therefore, one of atomistic events.

Ontology is confined to that which is experienced13 and is, therefore, of the atomistic events of sense experience.14 Because these objects are confined to experience, the ontology is empirical; and because these objects are thought to exist independently of one's identification of them, it is realist, The ontology can, thereby, be labelled empirical realist.

The deductivist mode of theorising, and the functional relations and laws that operationalise it, are rendered intelligible, therefore, by the consistent presupposition of causality as constant event conjunctions and an empirical realist ontology.15 Figure (2) illustrates, that this empirical realist ontology consists of two fused domains referred to as the empirical and the actual. What is, is presumed co-existent with what is (or what could, under certain conditions be) perceived. Causality as constant event conjunctions means that if some event is perceived, one can only seek its cause in terms of another perceived event. There is nowhere else to seek a cause because any other domain in this ontological spectrum is ruled out. The result is not only an impoverished ontology, one restricted to the domains of the empirical and the actual, but also a set of implicit (ontological) claims about the world that are, in fact, at odds with the way the world really is. The world does not consist merely of events and their experiences: nor does it consist merely of constant conjunctions of these events. This is a serious state of affairs because it means the very building blocks out of which theories are constructed fail to express reality.