MANUSCRIPT PROPOSAL

SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE DIALECTIC:

POLITICAL ECONOMY IN THE UNO-SEKINE STYLE

I am putting the final touches on a manuscript, which aims, in the limited space of one
130,000 word volume to introduce academics, students and interested activists in the
English speaking world to the Japanese Uno approach to political economy and, more
broadly, to Unoist social science generally. The contents of the book are, as follows:

(i.) an introduction

(ii.) three long chapters outlining the dialectical logic, which capital employs in its
attempt to manage the material economic life of a society. In the introduction, I will have
prepared the way for this exposition by arguing that that it is possible to arrive at
complete knowledge of the inner logic /software /operating principles / programme of
capitalism, an economic system, which humans have created, unlike natural systems, but
which exists only to the extent that it can transcend us so as to successfully regulate our
economic activities in a seemingly natural fashion from the outside by means of its self-
regulating market and its attendant logic. When I say that capital operates according to a
dialectical logic I mean what I say. Throughout the first three chapters, I point to the
correspondences between Hegels Doctrine of Quality and the structures of Marxs
CAPITAL, and, to an even greater extent, to that of Kozo Unos PRINCIPLES OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY and Thomas T. Sekines OUTLINE OF THE DIALECTIC
OF CAPITAL.

Apart from these brief philosophical and methodological interludes, the content
of the first three chapters may be viewed as a primer in Marxian economic theory, with
this proviso. My outline of the theory of capitalism (which is more of a genuine outline
than Sekines formidable, two-volume magnum opus) shows how Marxs unfinished
masterpiece can be completed and corrected so as to provide, for example, an
unassailable defence of the necessity of the law of value. It also shows how we may
approach a solution to the overblown but, nevertheless, genuine transformation
problem, which has plagued economics and mathematics-challenged Marxists, who have
been cowed into submission by neo-classical economists and their neo-Ricardian, self-
styled Marxist fellow travellers. The key to solving the transformation problem is to
recognize that two transformations must take place as we move from the Doctrine of
Production to the Doctrine of Distribution- first, and, more importantly, a dialectical one
and, secondly, a mathematical one. (Although, in this primer, I have reduced the
mathematics component to the absolute minimum necessary to present an outline of
capitalisms logic of self-organization, it should be obvious now that I could not
eliminate mathematics entirely.)
(iii.) An account of capitals logic will tell you the full story of how capital will attempt
to organize material economic life under ideal circumstances (for capital), when capital,
its self-regulating, society-wide market and its attendant logic do not have to contend
with collective human or intractable use-value resistance (Capital operates best when it
only has to confront individual human resistance, together with the resistance of light,
cotton-type use values, such as dominated economic life in the late liberal Britain of
Marxs mature year.) At any stage in capitalist history, capital will run into human and
use-value resistance that it will not be able to overcome by its own autonomous motion.
This resistance to capital is not made necessary or inevitable by the operation of capitals
dialectical logic, contra Lukacs et al. Resistance to capital is an expression of human
freedom and cannot be fully accounted for in dialectical terms. We will have to move to
another level of theory to begin to theorize how resistance to capitals logic affects the
operation of that logic. The stages theory of capitalist development examines the
economic policies of the leading capitalist state in the mercantilist, liberal and imperialist
stages of capitalist development, as these policies aimed to subdue human and use-value
resistance (i.e. to internalize externalities) to the point that capital and its self-regulating
market could begin to operate autonomously and effectively so as to reproduce economic
life successfully. This is the subject matter of the fourth chapter.

(iv.) In the next chapter, I make the case, based on our knowledge of the logic of
capitalism, that we have not been living in a viable capitalist economy for quite some
time and that our present transitional economy is quite unstable, given that we have not
replaced capitalisms decaying institutions with a new and coherent form of economic
life. The oil and petro-chemical based economy that emerged after World War II
emphasises heavy and complex (e.g. autos, computer technologies, reactors, drugs,
weaponry etc.) use-values that cannot be produced by relatively small and competitive
firms or managed by the self-regulating capitalist market. In order to prop up the corpse
of a no longer economically viable and, undoubtedly, ecologically unsustainable
capitalism, state and supra-state agencies, in collusion with trans-national corporate
interests, devise ad hoc policies, that aim to supplant market regulation by national and,
increasingly, undemocratic global planning agencies. A major problem with this type of
regulation is that typically class interests triumph over the requirement to maintain the
viability and ecological sustainability of this economy over time. Indeed, the euphoria
generated by the transition to an oil- based economy, in which energy appeared to be
virtually cost-less and Keynes appeared to have solved the economic problem, has long
since been replaced by the spectres of jobless growth and an impending ecological
catastrophe as a consequence.. The dialectic of capital remains useful in this era because
it allows us to determine just how far we have departed from a viable, sustainable albeit
class-divided capitalism without having managed to replace it with an economy which is
coherent, viable and sustainable over time. Moreover, the reproduction of capitals logic
in thought that we earlier accomplished makes it possible to clearly demarcate the laws
specific to capitalism from the general material economic and ecological norms that must
prevail in any viable economy. The latter assist us in the effort to determine just how
tenuous our current situation is.
(v.) Next, I demonstrate how the dialectical logic of capitalism and the general norms of
material economic life can be employed to show how great the distance is between
capitalism and all other forms of economic life that have existed on the planet.. They may
also be employed to demonstrate how far we have removed ourselves from nature in two
senses. Where once we were allegedly not remarkably different from animals in a herd,
and were totally at the mercy of the vagaries of nature, we are now insulated pretty
effectively from knowledge of and direct, unmediated contact with the living systems of
the natural world and, yet, for all the distance we have travelled, we have not achieved
collective, democratic and informed control of our interactions with nature and many of
us have no recognition of the fact that our present economies are unnatural, in the sense
of not being either comfortably embedded within regional ecosystems or, therefore,
ecologically sustainable over time. The reason why many of us lack this awareness is
because both nature and working people became subordinate to capital at the dawn of the
modern (i.e. capitalist) era. We have not had the right, in the most democratic of western
societies, to democratically manage our economic interactions with nature. To truly free
ourselves or nature from the yoke of the industrial and hyper-industrial society that
capitalism has spawned, we must be vigilant to ensure that we achieve both as part of one
seamless process.

In this chapter, I also rethink historical materialism in light of what has been learned from
the dialectic of capital and the general norms of economic life. It should be obvious, at
this point, that it would be a serious error to read back into pre-capitalist societies a logic
of technological development that was specific to capitalism and the discipline of its
society-wide, competitive, capitalist market. At the same time, it should also be
recognized that the general economic norms that are clearly isolated, revealed and
demarcated in the process of reproducing the logic of capitalism in thought come to us
with a capitalist and industrial bias since the theory of capitals logic looks at material
economic life from capitals point of view. These general economic norms must now be
rethought to take into account that, in most human societies we hunt, gather and grow
most of what we consume and produce or manufacture comparatively little. Moreover, in
agricultural societies, industry is always subordinate to agriculture. This has profound
implications for the materialist interpretation of history.

(vi.) In the final chapter, I attempt to rescue Marxs undeservedly bad reputation in some
anarchist, green and feminist circles by making a plausible case that he was both radically
democratic and ecologically aware and that he was also pretty consistently anti-
bureaucratic and even anti-productivist with regard to his vision of socialism. I then
outline what principles Marx thinks ought to inform the attempt to create a vibrantly
democratic, ecologically sustainable, non-productivist and communitarian socialism and
I show how what we have learned from the Uno approach and especially from the writing
of Thomas Sekine can be used to create a model of socialism, which is not only
consistent with these principles but is practicable. Not only that, this model demonstrates
how certain apparently conflicting strains in Marxs vision can be effectively reconciled.

John R. Bell
209-203 Kimta Road
 Victoria, B.C.
Canada V9A6T5
1-250-385-1258
johnrbell@shaw.ca