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

Capital & Class, Spring 2001 by Fleetwood, Steve

[P]eople do not create society. For it always pre-exists them and is a necessary condition for their activity. Rather society must be regarded as an ensemble of structures, practices and conventions which individuals reproduce and transform, but which would not exist unless they did so. Society does not exist independently of human activity (the error of reification). But it is not the product of it (the error of voluntarism) (1989: 36. See also 1987:129).

The transformational principle, then, centres upon the causal mechanisms, structures, powers and relations that are the everpresent condition, and the continually reproduced and/or transformed outcome, of human agency. Agents, acting purposefully or consciously, unconsciously draw upon, and thereby reproduce, the mechanisms, structures, powers and relations which govern their actions in daily life.

Switch in the mode of theorising

Operating with a stratified and transformational ontology, the emphasis of investigation necessarily switches from the domains of the empirical and actual and the ensuing event patterns observed (or hypothesised) to the domain of the deep and the mechanisms that govern these events. Investigation switches from the consequences, that is, from the outcomes or results (in the form of events and their patterns) of some particular human action, to the conditions that make that action possible. As Bhaskar puts matters:

Looked at in this way [TMSA] ... the task of the various social sciences [is] to lay out the structural conditions for various conscious human actions-for example, what economic processes must take place for Christmas shopping to be possible-but they do not describe the latter (1989: 36).

Because of the openness of socio-economic systems and the transfactual nature of the causal mechanisms, consequences or outcomes cannot be deduced or predicted. The causal mechanisms that govern this human action can, however, be uncovered and explained. Explanation is substituted for deduction, prediction, solution, determination and calculation as the objectives of science.

It is worth saying a little more here about explanation. The causal-explanatory mode of reasoning makes significant use of a particular kind of explanation, namely contrastive explanation. Lipton (1993; 35) describes this with exceptional clarity:

What gets explained is not simply 'Why this?, but 'Why this rather than that?'... We may not explain why the leaves turn yellow in November, but only, for example, why they turn yellow in November rather than in January, or why they turn yellow in November rather than turning blue.

Whilst contrastive explanation will be employed in section 2.3 note two points. First, the nature of explanation is far richer than that utilised in the deductive mode of theorisation where explanation reduces to efficient causality; prediction/deduction; and often requires the introduction of falsehoods. Second one can now understand the reason for calling the mode of reasoning 'causal-explanatory'. In this mode to explain a phenomena is to give information about relevant causes. This information is, typically, about the underlying, transfactually operating, causal mechanisms, social structures and powers. 17 It also expresses the main objective of science, namely, explanatory power.