Michael Heinrich (political scientist)

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Michael Heinrich 2014 in Zagreb

Michael Heinrich (* 1957 in Heidelberg ) is a German political scientist .

Life

From 1987 to 1993 Heinrich was a research associate at the Department of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin , where he was awarded a Dr. rer. pole. received his doctorate. In 1998 he was visiting professor at the University of Vienna and in 2003 a substitute professor at the University of Applied Sciences for Technology and Economics in Berlin (FHTW). Then Heinrich was a lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. Since the winter semester 2005/2006 he has been working again at the FHTW, which was renamed the Berlin University of Applied Sciences in 2009 . Heinrich had collaborated in the early phase of the edition of Marx excerpts on the crisis of 1857/58 of the Marx-Engels Complete Edition, Section 4, Volume 14.

Heinrich was a managing member of the editorial team of PROKLA - magazine for critical social science - responsible for press law until October 2014 . He was replaced in this role by Ingo Stützle .

His work focuses on Marxian theory and the history of economic theory formation . Heinrich belongs to the circle of left-wing economists around the emeritus professor Elmar Altvater .

In April 2018 Heinrich's first volume of a three-part Marx biography was published, which presents the life of Marx in connection with his work development. The book was published in Brazil in October 2018, the English translation was published in June 2019, followed by the French edition in September 2019. The other volumes have been announced for 2020 and 2022.

theory

Heinrich is an outspoken opponent of what he calls “ideology Marxism”, of which Karl Kautsky is his protagonist . This type of Marxism is characterized by "an extremely simple knitted materialism", "bourgeois progressive thinking, a few greatly simplified elements of Hegel's philosophy and set pieces of Marxian terminology" that are "combined into simple formulas and explanations of the world". Other particularly prominent features are "an often crude economism " and "a pronounced historical determinism , which regards the end of capitalism and the proletarian revolution as naturally occurring events".

Delusion context

In contrast, Heinrich sees Marx primarily as a "critic of the socialization mediated through value and thus 'fetishized'". Following on from Althusser's structuralism and critical theory , he speaks of a delusion to which capitalists and the working class are equally subject. Even if this fetishism is not fundamentally impenetrable, there can be no talk of "a privileged position of knowledge of the working class" or of a conscious instrumentalization by capital, which is why a moral criticism of the behavior of individuals is pointless.

Monetary Theory of Value

Heinrich rejects the prevailing “substantialist” interpretation of Marx's labor theory of value, which is to understand value directly “as a property of a single commodity”. Heinrich understands this rather as a monetary value theory , precisely therein lies the Marxian paradigm shift compared to premonetary labor value theories such as classical political economy , but also the utility theory of the value of neoclassics .

Even if the value of a commodity appears to be a material property , it is namely a social relationship, namely the relationship “between the individual labor of the producer and total social labor .” That does not mean that exchange produces value, but only that it mediates this Relationship, only in it “does value receive an objective form of value ”. According to Heinrich, the goods owners had to produce money as a result of the exchange, so money is “by no means only an aid to exchange on a practical level and only an appendage to the theory of value on a theoretical level. Without a form of value, the goods cannot relate to one another as values ​​and only the form of money is the form of value appropriate to the value ”.

Fall of the rate of profit and crisis theory

Heinrich expressly rejects Marx's law that the rate of profit tends to fall . The rate of profit could very well fall, but it could also rise - a permanent tendency towards the fall in the rate of profit could not be justified at the general level. Neither can the crisis-prone nature of capitalism infer a long-term tendency to aggravate the opposing moments: “Crises are (...) not only destructive, rather, in crises, the unity of moments that belong together (such as production and consumption) are made independent of one another are forcibly restored (production and consumption obey different regulations). "

He therefore resolutely rejects the thesis advocated by value critics such as Robert Kurz that the contradictions of the logic of production and consumption represent an "escalating, logical self-contradiction of capital", on which capitalism inevitably breaks. The widespread already in the history of the labor movement theory of collapse had of capital "always a relief function historically: how bad the current losses also were Regardless, the end of the enemy was ultimately certain." Such a find, despite the hints in his early work " plan “, Not even with Marx. However, "the lack of these prophetic certainties (...) does not make capitalism any better."

criticism

Despite the broad reception of his approach, Michael Heinrich's reading of Marx has met with mixed echoes. Wolfgang Fritz Haug states : "Since Heinrich avoids the saving criticism of Marxist tradition and places himself outside the history of class struggles and sacrifices the dialectic of logic, his introduction to kidnapping from Marxism."

On monetary value theory

Hans-Georg Backhaus and Helmut Reichelt , representatives of the Neue Marx-Lektüre , state in Heinrich “an absolute dichotomy of the economy into a natural real sphere, in which no goods but products are manufactured, and the sphere of exchange”. Norbert Trenkle , representative of the critical group Krisis , agrees with this criticism: “This social relationship is by no means first established in exchange. In postulating this, Heinrich does not go beyond Marx, but on the contrary falls behind him and ends up on the ground of bourgeois economics himself. "

On the crisis theory

Norbert Trenkle also accuses Heinrich of "positiveizing the criticism of political economy and rendering it harmless." Heinrich's main concern is to purge every collapse- theoretical implication from Marx's theory. In doing so, he proceeded “almost violently with Marx's writings” and “systematically suppresses all statements that do not fit his picture”.

In the context of delusion

Proponents of a more classical reading of Marx also criticize the fact that humans hardly take place as an actor in Heinrich's conceptualization, that conflictuality is exhausted in the abstract and that concrete arguments in the form of class struggle no longer have any place, because everyone is equally blinded by the commodity fetish subject. According to Karl Reitter , Heinrich was overinterpreting Marx's formula of capital as an automatic subject . Indirectly, Heinrich "unfortunately gives a certain boost to the talk about the delusion context, behind whose gloomy curtain all class antagonisms become irrelevant."

The GegenStandpunkt editorial team criticizes Heinrich's opposition to any moral criticism of capitalist action within capitalism. This ends up with "that there is actually nothing to criticize about the agents of capital and their exploitation under the given property and exchange relationships: what they do is absolutely correct according to the rules of the exchange of goods." To him, "apparently nothing is more important [...] than to take the economically powerful out of the line of fire ”.

In the development of the rate of profit

Heinrich believes that he can refute the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall by showing that the use of better technology reduces the cost price and increases the surplus value in the amount of this decrease. Klaus Müller , on the other hand, maintains that the ratio of surplus value to the cost price of the goods (to the capital consumed ) can be called the rate of profit. But that is not the rate of profit, the tendency of which Marx justified. Marx related the surplus value or the mass of profit to the total capital advanced . Müller shows that the rate of profit related to the cost price can rise, while at the same time the "Marxian", i.e. H. the rate of profit related to the capital advance decreases. Heinrich would have failed in the attempt to refute the tendency of the (capital advance) rate of profit in a formal and logical manner.

Fonts

Monographs

  • The science of value. The Marxian Critique of Political Economy between Scientific Revolution and Classical Tradition. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-87975-583-3 (Zugl .: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 1990) (7th expanded edition 2017, ISBN 978-3-89691-454-5 ).
  • Critique of Political Economy. An introduction. Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-89657-582-1 .
  • How to read Marx's Capital? Butterfly Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-89657-051-2 .
  • How to read Marx's Capital? Vol. 2, Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-89657-053-6 .
  • Ce qu'est Le Capital de Marx: Le Capital après la MEGA; Les éditions françaises du Capital , Paris 2017, ISBN 978-2-35367-034-5 .
  • Karl Marx and the birth of modern society. Biography and work development. Volume 1: 1818-1841 , Schmetterling Verlag, Stuttgart 2018, ISBN 3-89657-085-4 .
    • engl. Translation: Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society: The Life of Marx and the Development of His Work. Volume I: 1818-1841 , Monthly Review Press, New York 2019, ISBN 978-1-58367-735-3 .
    • French translation: Karl Marx et la naissance de la société moderne, tome 1, 1818-1841 , Les Éditions sociales, Paris 2019, ISBN 978-2-35367-044-4 .

Editing

  • With Dirk Messner: Globalization and Perspectives for Left Politics. Festschrift for Elmar Altvater on his 60th birthday. Westphalian steam boat, Münster 1998, ISBN 3-89691-443-X .
  • With Werner Bonefeld: Capital & Criticism: After the "new" Marx reading. VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-89965-403-5 .

items

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://marx-biografie.de/
  2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of November 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Blog on theorie.org, accessed on November 8, 2017
  3. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 23.
  4. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 10.
  5. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 77.
  6. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 52.
  7. ^ A b Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 62.
  8. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 54.
  9. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. S. 152 and Heinrich: The science of value. 2nd Edition. 1999, p. 327 ff.
  10. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. P. 174.
  11. ^ Robert Kurz: Black Book Capitalism . A swan song for the market economy. Ullstein, Munich 2001, p. 731 f.
  12. ↑ Heinrich: Critique of the political economy. Pp. 175-178.
  13. ↑ Wolfgang Fritz Haug : On the criticism of monetarist capital reading. Part II: Logic and Practice with Heinrich. In: The argument. 258, Volume 46, Issue 6, 2004, pp. 865–876.
  14. ↑ Backhaus / Reichelt 1995, p. 68.
  15. ↑ Norbert Trenkle: In the bourgeois heaven of circulation. In: Forays. 3/2000.
  16. ↑ Norbert Trenkle: Because what can't be what can't be. About Michael Heinrich's attempt to render Marx's crisis theory harmless. ( Memento from December 2, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) In: Streifzüge. 1/2000.
  17. ^ Karl Reitter: Capitalism without class struggle? to Michael Heinrich: Critique of Political Economy. In: Grundrisse. 11, autumn 2004, pp. 26-34.
  18. ↑ GegenStandpunkt: How not to reread “Das Kapital” again. In: GegenStandpunkt. 2/08.
  19. ↑ Klaus Müller: Profit . PapyRossa Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-89438-606-1 , p. 111-124 .
personal data
SURNAME Heinrich, Michael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg