Kioupkiolis’ Feedback (27/4/2023) 1. Need to mention/answer newer conceptions on value (on the ones that deny it is applicable). E.g. Hardt & Negri (Multitude & Commonwealth mainly) and Fuchs. 2. Need to emphasize on the novel points of the argument early on 3. Commons theories: De Angelis, Bollier & Helfrich, P2PF (no need to pick one)

There is also another limitation that may be pointed out. It is the fact that our treatment seems not to include a particular form of doing in production, a form that many observers believe is a peculiar contemporary feature of what they call post-Fordism, namely the doing that creates the new, that imagines, that innovates, and that is based on team work, forms of cooperation and relational labour among the doers, which give them a higher autonomy in conceptualisation and production than that possessed by the classic mass workers tied to assembly lines. As we have seen in Chapter 12, Hardt and Negri among others refer to this as ‘immaterial labour’ and argue that this form of labour is beyond capitalist measure precisely because it is a form of social cooperation that is constituted by relational and communicational patterns defined by the doers themselves (hence measured by themselves). While it might be argued that ‘no transcendent power or measure will determine the values of our world [since] value will be determined only by humanity’s own continuous innovation and creation’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 356), it is also true that when innovating and creating singular producers are pitted against each other in an endless rat race, the values that emerge from this ongoing clash are measurable by capital. Indeed, it is through this antagonistic mode of relation among social producers that capital values are constituted. Thus, the ongoing creation of SNLT is a feature not only of what is called, ‘material’ (capitalist) production, but also of what is referred to as ‘immaterial’ (capitalist) production, i.e., the production of ideas and affects. Here too we can have ongoing competition among producers who are then locked in the feedback loop of their own rat race against each other. What is continuously compared in order to give rise to differentials are here the perceived quality of ideas, whether in the form of creative work for advertising or that leading to product or process innovation, and improvements in the time and efficiency of their execution, of getting the job done. All the same, in terms of affects, what is measured is not only the speed of service, but also the perceived service quality as measured by given indicators: smiling, ‘costumer satisfaction’, and so on. In both these cases, the set of systematic pressures is the same as in the traditional case of ‘material’ work. […] Indeed, with respect to this immaterial labour, the degree of autonomy of the doers has precise limits defined by processes of capitalist measurement and not by the creative workers themselves. The selection of new ideas that can be turned into products or processes of doing occurs with respect to the SNLT process of measurement. The communicational patterns within work teams are bounded by the priorities set by their employers and managers, who measure the results of these communicational patterns in terms of price, quality and profit deviations from benchmarks. Nurses, doctors, teachers have a variety of degrees of autonomy, but are increasingly exposed to measures imposed from outside themselves which are heteronymous, which instruct them, in a context of declining resources and numbers of staff, to meet certain quality targets that relate in one way or another to external benchmarks (Harvie 2005). De Angelis, The Beginning of History, Capital’s measuring of ‘material’ and ‘immaterial’ labour

But why is continuous ‘change’ necessary? In the presence of Hayek’s rejection of a ‘hierarchy of ends’ to evaluate human societies, the criteria brought forward by Hayek that justify this continuous compulsion are the identification of an abstractly defined ‘progress’ as an end in itself: ‘Progress is movement for movement’s sake’ (Hayek 1960: 41). This idealisation of movement for movement’s sake, irrespective of the direction of the movement, its social outcome, what is produced and how needs are formed and met, and irrespective of the nature of social interaction, makes Hayek the quintessential capitalist apologist. [Note] This philosophical stand is in fact close to what Marx identifies as the nature of the capitalist movement, i.e., ‘production for production’s sake’ or ‘accumulation for accumulation’s sake’. The continuous process of accumulation implies the continuous need for individual private agents to blindly adapt to its movement. De Angelis, The Beginning of History, Chapter 14: Market freedom and the prison: Hayek and Bentham: The Market

The price system is a communication system. Knowledge that is widely dispersed throughout society can thus become effectively utilised (Hayek 1978:181–2, 188), not simply as the know-how necessary for the production of individual commodities, but as a social force that makes it necessary to produce in certain ways and for certain purposes. De Angelis, The Beginning of History, Chapter 14: Market freedom and the prison: Hayek and Bentham: The Market

The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources - if "given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge not given to anyone in its totality. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (The American Economic Review, p.519-520)

If we can agree that the economic problem of society is mainly one of rapid adaptation to changes in the particular circumstances of time and place, it would seem to follow that the ultimate decisions must be left to the people who are familiar with these circumstances, who know directly of the relevant changes and of the resources immediately available to meet them. We cannot expect that this problem will be solved by first communicating all this knowledge to a central board which, after integrating all knowledge, issues its orders. We must solve it by some form of decentralization. But this answers only part of our problem. We need decentralization because only thus can we ensure that the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place will be promptly used. But the "man on the spot" cannot decide solely on the basis of his limited but intimate knowledge of the facts of his immediate surroundings. There still remains the problem of communicating to him such further information as he needs to fit his decisions into the whole pattern of changes of the larger economic system. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (The American Economic Review, p.524)

We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function. […] The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on, and passed on only to those concerned. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (The American Economic Review, p.526-527)

The marvel is that in a case like that of a scarcity of one raw material, without an order being issued, without more than perhaps a handful of people knowing the cause, tens of thousands of people whose identity could not be ascertained by months of investigation, are made to use the material or its products more sparingly; i.e., they move in the right direction. This is enough of a marvel even if, in a constantly changing world, not all will hit it off so perfectly that their profit rates will always be maintained at the same constant or "normal" level. I have deliberately used the word "marvel" to shock the reader out of the complacency with which we often take the working of this mechanism for granted. I am convinced that if it were the result of deliberate human design, and if the people guided by the price changes understood that their decisions have significance far beyond their immediate aim, this mechanism would have been acclaimed as one of the greatest triumphs of the human mind. Its misfortune is the double one that it is not the product of human design and that the people guided by it usually do not know why they are made to do what they do. But those who clamor for "conscious direction" and who cannot believe that anything which has evolved without design (and even without our understanding it) should solve problems which we should not be able to solve consciously should remember this: The problem is precisely how to extend the span of our utilization of resources beyond the span of the control of any one mind; and, therefore, how to dispense with the need of conscious control and how to provide inducements which will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (The American Economic Review, p.527)

The price system is just one of those formations which man has learned to use (though he is still very far from having learned to make the best use of it) after he had stumbled upon it without understanding it. Through it not only a division of labor but also a coordinated utilization of resources based on an equally divided knowledge has become possible. The people who like to deride any suggestion that this may be so usually distort the argument by insinuating that it asserts that by some miracle just that sort of system has spontaneously grown up which is best suited to modern civilization. It is the other way round: man has been able to develop that division of labor on which our civilization is based because he happened to stumble upon a method which made it possible. Had he not done so he might still have developed some other, altogether different, type of civilization, something like the "state" of the termite ants, or some other altogether unimaginable type. All that we can say is that nobody has yet succeeded in designing an alternative system in which certain features of the existing one can be preserved which are dear even to those who most violently assail it - such as particularly the extent to which the individual can choose his pursuits and consequently freely use his own knowledge and skill. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (The American Economic Review, p.528)

If the market cannot be said to have a ‘unitary order of ends’, it prioritises a unitary rationale for human social interaction: the endless promotion of efficiency, the endless unqualified ‘progress’, the never-ending rat race, the competitive compulsion that ‘goes on all the time’. This is not an external ‘end product’ of Hayek’s market order, but its raison d’être. De Angelis, The Beginning of History, Chapter 14: Market freedom and the prison: Hayek and Bentham: Market and Panopticism: Two Overlapping Orders

It is always a question of the relative importance of the particular things with which he is concerned […]. Even the single controlling mind, in possession of all the data for some small, self-contained economic system, would not every time some small adjustment in the allocation of resources had to be made - go explicitly through all the relations between ends and means which might possibly be affected. It is indeed the great contribution of the pure logic of choice that it has demonstrated conclusively that even such a single mind could solve this kind of problem only by constructing and constantly using rates of equivalence (or "values," or "marginal rates of substitution"), i.e., by attaching to each kind of scarce resource a numerical index which cannot be derived from any property possessed by that particular thing, but which reflects, or in which is condensed, its significance in view of the whole means-end structure. In any small change he will have to consider only these quantitative indices (or "values") in which all the relevant information is concentrated; and by adjusting the quantities one by one, he can appropriately rearrange his dispositions without having to solve the whole puzzle ab initio, or without needing at any stage to survey it at once in all its ramifications. Fundamentally, in a system where the knowledge of the relevant facts is dispersed among many people, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coordinate the parts of his plan. Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society (The American Economic Review, p.525)

Concerning our modern economic system, understanding of the principles by which its order forms itself shows us that it rests on the use of knowledge (and of skills in obtaining relevant information), which no one possesses in its entirety, and that it is brought about because individuals are in their actions guided by certain general rules. Certainly, we ought not to succumb to the false belief, or delusion, that we can replace it with a different kind of order, which presupposes that all this knowledge can be concentrated in a central brain, or group of brains of any practicable size. The fact, however, that in spite of all the advance of our knowledge, the results of our endeavours remain dependent on circumstances about which we know little or nothing, and on ordering forces we cannot control, is precisely what so many people regard as intolerable. Constructivists ascribe this interdependence to still allowing ourselves to be guided by values which are not rationally demonstrated or given positive proof as justification for them. They assert that we no longer need to entrust our fate to a system, the results of which we do not determine beforehand, although it opens up vast new opportunities for the efforts of individuals, but at the same time resembles a game of chance in some respects, since no single person bears responsibility for the ultimate outcome. The anthropomorphic hypostatisation of a personified mankind, who pursue aims they have consciously chosen, thus leads to the demand that all those grown values not visibly serving approved ends, but which are conditions for the formation of an abstract order, should be discarded to offer individuals improved prospects of achieving their different and often conflicting goals. Scientific error of this kind tends to discredit values, on the observance of which the survival of our civilisation may depend. Hayek - New studies in philosophy, politics, economics and the history of ideas, p.13

So long as we cannot yet agree on crucial questions, such as whether a competitive market order is possible without the recognition of private several property in the instruments of production, it is clear that we still understand only very imperfectly the fundamental principles on which the existing order is based. Hayek - New studies in philosophy, politics, economics and the history of ideas, p.20

When communicative acts take the shape of grammatical speech, the symbolic structure has penetrated all components of interaction; the cognitive-instrumental grasp of reality and the steering mechanism that attunes the behavior of different interaction partners to one another, as well as the actors and their behavior dispositions, get connected to linguistic communication and are symbolically restructured. At the same time, this transposition of cognitions, obligations, and expressions onto a linguistic basis makes it possible in turn for the means of communication to take on new functions-in addition to the function of reaching understanding, those of coordinating action and socializing actors as well. Under the aspect of reaching understanding, communicative acts serve the transmission of culturally stored knowledge-as shown above, cultural tradition reproduces itself through the medium of action oriented to reaching understanding. Under the aspect of coordinating action, the same communicative acts serve the fulfillment of norms appropriate to a given context; social integration also takes place via this medium. Under the aspect of socialization, finally, communicative acts serve the construction of internal controls on behavior, in general, the formation of personality structures; one of Mead's fundamental insights is that socialization processes take place via linguistically mediated interaction. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.63

The critique of instrumental reason, which remains bound to the conditions of the philosophy of the subject, denounces as a defect something that it cannot explain in its defectiveness because it lacks a conceptual framework sufficiently flexible to capture the integrity of what is destroyed through instrumental reason. To be sure, Horkheimer and Adorno do have a name for it: mimesis. And even though they cannot provide a theory of mimesis, the very name calls forth associations—and they are intended: Imitation designates a relation between persons in which the one accommodates to the other, identifies with the other, empathizes with the other. There is an allusion here to a relation in which the surrender of the one to the example of the other does not mean a loss of self but a gain and an enrichment. Because the mimetic capacity escapes the conceptual framework of cognitive-instrumentally determined subject-object relations, it counts as the sheer opposite of reason, as impulse. Adorno does not simply deny to the latter any cognitive function. In his aesthetics he attempts to show what the work of art owes to the power of mimesis to unlock, to open up. But the rational core of mimetic achievements can be laid open only if we give up the paradigm of the philosophy of consciousness—namely, a subject that represents objects and toils with them—in favor of the paradigm of linguistic philosophy—namely, that of intersubjective understanding or communication—and puts the cognitive-instrumental aspect of reason in its proper place as part of a more encompassing communicative rationality. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, p.389-390

If we assume that the human species maintains itself through the socially coordinated activities of its members and that this coordination has to be established through communication—and in certain central spheres through communication aimed at reaching agreement—then the reproduction of the species also requires satisfying the conditions of a rationality that is inherent in communicative action. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, p.397

A subjectivity that is characterized by communicative reason resists the denaturing of the self for the sake of self-preservation. Unlike instrumental reason, communicative reason cannot be subsumed without resistance under a blind self-preservation. It refers neither to a subject that preserves itself in relating to objects via representation and action, nor to a self-maintaining system that demarcates itself from an environment, but to a symbolically structured lifeworld that is constituted in the interpretive accomplishments of its members and only reproduced through communication. Thus communicative reason does not simply encounter ready-made subjects and systems; rather, it takes part in structuring what is to be preserved. The Utopian perspective of reconciliation and freedom is ingrained in the conditions for the communicative sociation of individuals; it is built into the linguistic mechanism of the reproduction of the species. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 1, p.398

I gave a systematic presentation of Mead's attempt to explain, by way of reconstructing. symbolically mediated interaction and action in social roles. The first of these two stages of interaction is characterized by the emergence of a new medium of communication, the second by the norming of behavioral expectations. In the first phase, communication switches over from expressive gestures that stimulate behavior to the use of symbols; in the second, the transition to normatively regulated action means a shift to a symbolic basis for steering behavior: it is no longer only the means of communication that are symbolically restructured, but behavioral schemes and dispositions as well. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.43

When communicative acts take the shape of grammatical speech, the symbolic structure has penetrated all components of interaction; the cognitive-instrumental grasp of reality and the steering mechanism that attunes the behavior of different interaction partners to one another, as well as the actors and their behavior dispositions, get connected to linguistic communication and are symbolically restructured. At the same time, this transposition of cognitions, obligations, and expressions onto a linguistic basis makes it possible in turn for the means of communication to take on new functions-in addition to the function of reaching understanding, those of coordinating action and socializing actors as well. Under the aspect of reaching understanding, communicative acts serve the transmission of culturally stored knowledge-as shown above, cultural tradition reproduces itself through the medium of action oriented to reaching understanding. Under the aspect of coordinating action, the same communicative acts serve the fulfillment of norms appropriate to a given context; social integration also takes place via this medium. Under the aspect of socialization, finally, communicative acts serve the construction of internal controls on behavior, in general, the formation of personality structures; one of Mead's fundamental insights is that socialization processes take place via linguistically mediated interaction. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.63

A further consequence of being able to say "no” which was merely suggested above, concerns the actors themselves. If one aims to reconstruct how participants learn to orient their actions explicitly to validity claims, and wants to do so by means of the mechanism of taking the attitude of the other, the model of inner dialogue, which Mead used rather too unspecifically, turns out in fact to be helpful. In anticipating from alter a negative answer to his own speech act, and raising against himself an objection that alter might raise, ego understands what it means to make a criticizable validity claim. As soon, then, as ego masters the orientation to validity claims, he can repeat the internalization of discursive relations once more. Now alter already encounters him with the expectation that ego is not assuming the communicative role of the first person only in a naive manner, but will expand it, if necessary, to the role of a proponent in argumentation. If ego makes this attitude of alter his own, that is to say, if he views himself through the eyes of an arguing opponent and considers how he will answer to his critique, he gains a reflective relation to himself. By internalizing the role of a participant in argumentation, ego becomes capable of self-criticism. It is the relation- to-self established by this model of self-criticism that we shall call "reflective:” Knowing that one does not know has, since Socrates, rightly been regarded as the basis for self-knowledge. The reflective relation-to-self takes on different shadings according to the modes of language use. Ego can take up a relation to himself by way of a critique of his own statement, his own action, or his own self-presentation. The self to which he then relates is not a mysterious something; it is familiar to him from the communicative practice of daily life; it is ego himself in the communicative role of the first person, as he asserts the existence of states of affairs in an objectivating attitude, or enters into an interpersonal relation regarded as legitimate in the norm-conformative attitude, or makes a subjective experience accessible to a public in an expressive attitude. Correspondingly, ego can relate to himself according to the model of self-criticism: as an epistemic subject who is capable of learning and has already acquired a certain knowledge in his cognitive-instrumental dealings with reality, or as a practical subject who is capable of acting and has already formed a certain character or a superego in interactions with his reference persons, or as an affective subject who is sensitive, "passionate" in Feuerbach's sense, and has already demarcated from the external world of facts and norms a special domain of subjectivity marked by privileged access and intuitive presence. The reflective relation to self is the ground of the actor's accountability. A responsible actor behaves self-critically not only in his directly moralizable actions but also in his cognitive and expressive utterances. Although accountability is at bottom a moral-practical category, it also extends to the cognitions and expressions included in the validity spectrum of action oriented to reaching understanding. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol 2, p.74-75