Here's the link to the answer where I attempt to make good on my claim that
real abstractions emerge from reality, as opposed to the minds of women and
men (formal abstraction).
To which I replied:
Yes, I drew that conclusion when I read your recent Quora answer (yesterday) detailing your interpretation of Marx's Capital.
MS: "There are
general aspects of Hegel's method that Marx utilized in writing Capital,
moving from the abstract to the concrete, simple to complex, essence to
form of appearance. Marx's understanding of form and content is
inextricably bound up with Hegel's, as well. I don't know how these
facts can be denied by anyone, honestly."
I disagree. I have covered these issues at length at my site.
In fact, I think I have shown that Das Kapital is a Hegel-free
zone, except for a few jargonised expressions with which Marx merely
wished to "coquette". Indeed, in the Postface to the second edition,
Marx added a summary of 'the dialectic method', the only one he
published and endorsed in his entirety life, which he says is "my
method" and "the dialectic method", but in which not one atom of Hegel
is to be found. Here is that passage, alongside my comments about it and
other passages from the Postface (this is an except of part of my
argument in Essay Nine
Part One
-- Added on Edit: this section has since been re-written):
Some readers might be tempted to point to the following passage from the Afterword to the Second Edition of Das Kapital in support of the idea that Marx was still working under Hegel's influence (but only if put 'the right way up') when he wrote that classic study:
"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added. I have used the punctuation found in MECW here.]
However, Marx's use of the word "coquetted" suggests that, at best, Hegel's Logic only exercised a superficial influence on his ideas, confined merely to certain "modes of expression", and limited to just a few sections of Das Kapital (i.e., "here and there").
[Again, contrast that with what Lenin said, and with what we are about to discover concerning Marx's view of "the dialectic method".]
Marxist dialecticians often take exception to that interpretation of the Afterword, arguing that all this "coquetting" was, on Marx's own admission, confined to the chapter on value, not the rest of the book. However, that response is far from conclusive.
First of all, the punctuation in MECW (reproduced above) suggests Marx was using the chapter on value as one example among many where he had "coquetted" with Hegel's ideas, but it wasn't the only one.
Second, it would be decidedly odd if Marx had "coquetted" with Hegelian jargon in the most important chapter of the book, but had done so nowhere else. Why pick on only the most important chapter to "coquette" -- i.e., play around -- with such allegedly important concepts?
Third, as far as Marx "openly" avowing himself a pupil of Hegel, he pointedly put that comment in the past tense:
"I criticised the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, at a time when is was still the fashion. But just when I was working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, namely as a 'dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Ibid., pp.102-03. Bold emphases added. Once more, I have reproduced the punctuation used in MECW.]
This is hardly a ringing endorsement; indeed, it is equivocal, at best. Marx didn't say that he was still a pupil of Hegel, but that he once was. Of course, it might have been true that he still counted himself a pupil of Hegel when the above was written, but there is nothing in the above to suggest that Marx viewed the link between his own and Hegel's work in the way Lenin had, or in the way that subsequent dialecticians have.
[Several letters that suggest Marx still counted himself as a 'pupil' of Hegel' were in fact written before the Afterword was published, so in this respect they aren't relevant.]
Of course, it is possible to call a theorist a "mighty thinker" and claim to have learnt much from her/him even while disagreeing with everything they had to say. For example, I think Plato is a "mighty thinker", but I disagree with 99.99% of his ideas.
John Rees attempted to neutralise the devastating conclusion that the extent of the influence on Marx of Hegel's Logic was no more than a few jargonised expressions with which Marx merely "coquetted", only "here and there", by arguing as follows:
"Remarkably, this last quotation is sometimes cited as evidence that Marx was not serious about his debt to Hegel and that he only or merely 'coquetted' with Hegel's phraseology, and that he really did not make any further use of the dialectic. That this interpretation is false should be obvious from this sentence alone. The meaning is clearly that Marx was so keen to identify with Hegel that he 'even' went so far as to use the same terms as 'that mighty thinker' not that he 'only' used those terms." [Rees (1998), p.100.]
Well, if that were so, why did Marx put his praise of Hegel in the past tense, and why did he immediately add the following?
"...[E]ven, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, [that he (Marx) had -- RL] coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added. Once more, I have used the punctuation found in MECW.]
This comment is reasonably clear: Marx himself -- not Rosa, not Peter Struve, not James Burnham, not Max Eastman... --, Marx himself says that he "coquetted" with Hegelian phraseology (hardly a serious use of the Logic!), and only in a limited number of places ("here and there"). So, far from merely "using" such terms, as Rees suggests, Marx in fact "coquetted" with them. Indeed, had his alleged "debt" to Hegel been plain for all to see, he wouldn't have expressed himself so equivocally or dismissively. [These days we would perhaps use 'scare quotes'.]
[As will soon become clear, the core HM ideas in Das Kapital owe much more to the 'dialectical method' developed by Aristotle, Kant and The Scottish Historical School (of Ferguson, Millar, Robertson, Smith, Hume, and Steuart) than they do to Hegel. On this, see Meek (1954). On Kant, see Wood (1998, 1999). On Marx and Aristotle, see McCarthy (1992) and Meikle (1995). On Aristotle's conception of 'dialectic', see Reeve (2001). (See also my comments at RevLeft, here and here; some of that material has been reproduced below.) For Aristotle's comments about his own 'dialectical method', see Appendix A. (Unfortunately, RevLeft is now almost totally defunct, so those links might not work!)]
[HM = Historical Materialism.]
It is now apparent that the ideas of these earlier dialecticians (Aristotle, etc.), coupled with the above comments (and more importantly, the content of the long passage quoted below), represent the "rational core" of Hegel's mystical theory -- in which it turns out that there is no (non-'coquetted') input from Hegel whatsoever in Das Kapital.
Hence, for Marx, to rotate Hegel and put him 'on his feet' is to reveal how empty his head really is -- the "rational kernel" contains not one atom of Hegel!
Some have pointed to Marx's own words -- where he refers to "the dialectic method" -- in order to counter the above allegations. The question is, of course: what did Marx himself --, not others -- what did Marx himself mean by that phrase?
Well, we needn't speculate. Marx very helpfully told us what he meant by it in that very same Afterword to the Second Edition. There, he quotes a reviewer in the following terms:
"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:
'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence. ... If in the history of civilisation the conscious element plays a part so subordinate, then it is self-evident that a critical inquiry whose subject-matter is civilisation, can, less than anything else, have for its basis any form of, or any result of, consciousness. That is to say, that not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its starting-point. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact. For this inquiry, the one thing of moment is, that both facts be investigated as accurately as possible, and that they actually form, each with respect to the other, different momenta of an evolution; but most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves. But it will be said, the general laws of economic life are one and the same, no matter whether they are applied to the present or the past. This Marx directly denies. According to him, such abstract laws do not exist. On the contrary, in his opinion every historical period has laws of its own.... As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has.'
"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
In the above passage, not one single Hegelian concept is to be found -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality", no "universal change" --, and yet Marx still calls this the "dialectic method", and says of it that it is "my method".
So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two, "here and there", with which he merely "coquetted".
In that case, and once more, Marx's "dialectic method" more closely resembled that of Aristotle, Kant and the Scottish Historical School.
Notice, too: Marx isn't here referring to a "dialectic method", nor yet merely part or one aspect of "the dialectic method", but "the dialectic method". Even more significant, this is the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life.
Moreover, Marx's published words carry far more weight than do his unpublished musings. So, unlike the vast majority of Marx's epigones, I begin with this passage when I want to understand Marx --, since it tells us what Marx himself, not anyone else, what Marx himself considered his "method" to be -- and I interpret everything else Marx said about 'dialectics' in that light.
Mysteriously, those who claim to be Marxists refuse to do this! In fact, they almost totally ignore both this passage and what Marx said about it. Indeed, many of them severely criticise me for paying any heed to it!
Others often point to the following passage in reply:
"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." [Ibid., p.102. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]
But, one can't get any more "opposite" to Hegel than to excise his ideas completely from one's own.
Again, we needn't speculate about this since the long passage above -- in which not one atom of Hegel is to be found, and which Marx's nevertheless calls "the dialectic method" -- supports the above interpretation. That is indeed so if we begin with this, the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life, and ignore the failed Engels/Plekhanov/Lenin tradition of interpreting Marx as an 'inverted Hegelian'.
[I will pass no comment here on Marx's ideas concerning "reflection"; I will, however, have something to say about them in Essay Twelve Part Four, when it is published.]
Still others point to the following remarks:
"The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.
"In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary." [Ibid., p.102.]
Of course, this leaves it open to interpretation what the "rational form" of the dialectic really is. But, and once again, if we rely on what Marx actually published, as opposed to what the failed Engels/Plekhanov/Lenin tradition would have us believe, then the long passage above reveals what that "rational form" actually is. As we have seen, it contains no Hegel at all, upside down or the 'right way up'. Indeed, as noted earlier, to turn Hegel "the right side up" is to show how empty his head really is!
But, what about this?
"The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel's hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner." [Ibid.]
To be sure, concerning "the dialectic", that doesn't prevent Hegel "from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner." What does prevent him is that Hegel wasn't the first -- Aristotle, Kant and the Scottish Historical School beat him to it. Indeed, they exercised a major influence on Hegel himself; he simply took their ideas and mystified them with a lorry load of Hermetic and Christian gobbledygook. Indeed, Hegel himself failed to present his readers with a "comprehensive and conscious" form of "the dialectic", as the long quotation above shows. There, Marx calls that summary -- but not Hegel's ham-fisted 'dialectic' -- "the dialectic method", despite the fact that it was a Hegel-free zone.
[In fact, it isn't possible to make sense of Hegel's 'method', so there can't be a "comprehensive and conscious" form of "the dialectic" if we allow his ideas back in through a side door. So, we can perhaps now see why Marx referred to the long passage above as "the dialectic method"; he did so since it contained not one single atom of Hegel.]
In that case, according to Marx's own endorsement -- not mine -- according to Marx, "the dialectic method" contains no vestige of Hegel!
Naturally, DM-fans are guaranteed to take exception to that conclusion, but in that case they should pick a fight with Marx, not me.
In fact, they most certainly do not like it. Witness the reception an earlier version of the above argument received at RevLeft (and elsewhere) -- here, here, here, and here. Nothing rattles their chains as much as this. It seems that reality is one thing dialectically-distracted comrades are completely averse to facing, still less confronting. Witness, too, another recent attempt to impose Hegel on Das Kapital, here. In those 'debates', I have responded to several objections in addition to those mentioned above, one or two of which might indeed have occurred to the reader. I don't intend to reproduce that material in this Essay, so interested readers are referred to the above debates for more details. The latest attempt to re-mystify Marx can be found here, in the comments section at the bottom. An even more recent example can be accessed here. [However, as noted in the Preface, several of these links no longer work.]
Hence, when we begin with Marx's own summary of "the dialectic method", we arrive at an entirely different interpretation of his words -- that is, we end up with a reading of them at variance with the traditional use that has been made of them. If Marx called something that contains no trace of Hegel whatsoever "the dialectic method" (note again: not "a dialectical method", or "part or one aspect of the dialectic method", nor yet "one man's take on the dialectic method", but "the dialectic method"), and which by implication represents the "rational core" of 'dialectics', then it can't be the case that Hegel was "the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner." Again, why call such a summary -- the only one Marx published and endorsed in his entire life -- "the dialectic method", and "my method", if it contained absolutely no input from Hegel, unless Marx had abandoned Hegel by the time he came to write his masterpiece?
Of course, if we don't start from Marx's own description of his method (or, at least a description he endorsed), but from some other view of it concocted after he died, then we can hardly claim to have been faithful to his intentions.
It could be argued that the Grundrisse (i.e., Marx (1973)) is living disproof of many of the above allegations. Well, it would be had Marx seen fit to publish it -- but he didn't, so it isn't.
But, he did publish this:
"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added. Once more, I have used the punctuation found in MECW.]
Moreover, Marx added to Das Kapital the only summary of "the dialectic method" that he published and endorsed in his entire life, which is, as we have seen, a Hegel-free zone.
So, whatever it was that happened to Marx's thinking between the writing of the Grundrisse and his publishing the second edition of Das Kapital, it clearly changed his view of Hegel's Logic -- to such an extent that its jargon became something with which he merely wished to "coquette" --, or, to be more truthful, which he wanted almost totally to ignore.
Some critics of the above point to certain letters Marx sent to Engels and others, which seem to support the view that Marx still looked to Hegel as some sort of authority when he wrote Das Kapital. However, these letters aren't conclusive; the vast majority were written before the Afterword was published. More importantly, no unpublished work can countermand an author's published opinions. Once again, in Marx's case, that includes the only summary of "the dialectic method" he published and endorsed in his entire life (quoted earlier), in which there is no trace of Hegel whatsoever, upside down or 'the right way up'.
In several of these letters Marx does indeed speak about "the dialectic method" and "dialectics", but we now know what he meant by those words -- as the long quotation above tells us: his "dialectic method" owes absolutely nothing to Hegel, except for a few jargonised expressions with which he merely "coquetted", and even then only in a few places in Das Kapital -- i.e., "here and there", not "all the way through".
Of course, this doesn't mean that Marx's unpublished works aren't important, only that when it comes to interpreting an author, what he/she has published must take precedence.
Hence, if we rely only on what Marx actually published about "the dialectic method", and ignore the failed Engels/Plekhanov/Lenin tradition of ms-interpreting Marx, it is clear that Marx had turned his back on this 'mighty thinker' when he wrote Das Kapital.
[I find I have to keep repeating the above points since DM-fans develop selective blindness and tend to miss them otherwise. So, apologies are owed once more to readers who have to endure such repetition.]...
I then consider in detail a handful of passages from Volume One of Das Kapital itself to which comrades often point in support of the traditional interpretation of Marx's classic, and I show that none of them establishes what those comrades think they do. I won't reproduce that material here. I then add these remarks close to the end:
Once again, the above doesn't constitute cast iron proof that Marx didn't see eye-to-eye with other DM-fans (like those mentioned above) about there being a 'dialectic in nature', but it does throw the traditional interpretation of Das Kapital into considerable doubt.
In that case, unless supporters of the traditional view can produce a summary of "the dialectic method" written and published by Marx, contemporaneous with, or subsequent to, Das Kapital that supports the attempt to re-mystify his work, the thesis presented here must stand: Marx abandoned Hegel, root-and-branch, when he came to write his masterpiece. And, if that is the case, if "the dialectic method" in Das Kapital is a Hegel-free zone (upside down or 'the right way up'), then it is all the more obvious that he didn't accept the doctrine that there is a 'dialectic in nature' in his later years, either.
In that case, Lenin should have said:
"It is possible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, merely by coquetting with the phraseology of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later anyone who is capable of coquetting will understand Marx!!" [Edited misquotation of Lenin (1961), p.180.]
[Support for this reading of the relation between Marx, Lenin and Hegel has come from Louis Althusser's notorious article, 'Lenin Before Hegel' (reprinted in Althusser (2001)). I hasten to add that I don't agree with everything Althusser says in that essay (for example, I don't accept the "epistemological" break Althusser attributes to Marx -- Marx is plainly not interested in 'epistemology', an odd idea that Althusser and others have foisted on Marx). It is also worth noting that I have pushed this argument much further than Althusser ever would, or could. After all, he still thinks the word "contradiction" has some sort of 'dialectical' role to play in Marxist theory! In addition, he totally ignored what Marx had to say about Philosophy, and the "distorted" jargon and empty concepts philosophers like him employ.]
From here:
http://www.anti-dialectics.co.
I have devoted two long essays at my site (Essay Three Parts One and Two) that totally debunk the mythical 'process of abstraction'; in addition I also show that Marx didn't actually use it -- in spite of a few passages that seem to suggest otherwise.
http://www.anti-dialectics.co.
http://www.anti-dialectics.co.
MS: "Bad abstractions are a distortion of language. Hypostatizing distinctions made in the mind into reality is a distortion (e.g., turning labour in general into wage labour). Or treating the existing economic categories as they currently exist under a historically determined social form as if they were eternal is a distortion (e.g., as JS Mill does with production). 'One-sided' abstractions made by Ricardo are distortions (i.e., fixating on quantitative exchange relations, the magnitude of value, and ignoring its form). Proudhon organizing abstractions according to pre-made --assumed to be Hegelian logic-- is a distortion. But that doesn't mean abstraction is a distortion. It simply means abstractions can be."
In fact I manage to show that all such abstractions distort language. I won't go into details here since this reply is already far too long!
MS: "Here's the link to the answer where I attempt to make good on my claim that real abstractions emerge from reality, as opposed to the minds of women and men (formal abstraction)."
I am far from convinced you can successfully make that distinction based on what I read (yesterday). Abstractions don't leap out at us; they have to be apprehended somehow by human beings. In that case, the distinction between 'real' and 'formal' abstractions is, I think, a distinction without a difference. Again, I won't summarise my counter-arguments here (and for the above reasons).
Thanks for the link but as I said, I read that Quora answer yesterday. There is much in that answer with which I agree, but, again, much that I don't.
You might also like to read the exchange between Rosenthal and Tony Smith in Historical Materialism (Smith wrote a snotty review of Rosenthal's book in that journal).
Rosenthal, J. (2001), 'Hegel Decoder: A Reply To Smith's "Reply"', Historical Materialism 9, pp.111-51.
Smith, T. (1999), 'The Relevance Of Systematic Dialectics To Marxian Thought: Reply To Rosenthal', Historical Materialism 4, pp.215-40.
--------, (2002), 'Hegel: Mystic Dunce Or Important Predecessor? A Reply To John Rosenthal', Historical Materialism 10, 2, pp.191-205.
I don't know if Rosenthal responded a second time. Smith second reply is rather poor, in my view. I suspect Rosenthal didn't want to dignify it with a response.
Exchange #7 -- 18/11/2019:
MS:
Sorry for the slow response.
You:
"So, whatever it was that happened to Marx's thinking between the writing of the Grundrisse and his publishing the second edition of Das Kapital, it clearly changed his view of Hegel's Logic -- to such an extent that its jargon became something with which he merely wished to "coquette" --, or, to be more truthful, which he wanted almost totally to ignore."
I'd say, to his thinking, not much. His mode of expression changed. Why? Because the (Hegelian coquetted) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy fell stillborn on the press in 1859. The reading public could not penetrate it. This undoubtedly impacted Marx's mode of expression (and hurt his feelings). The first edition of Capital Vol. 1 ch. 1, which is less Hegelian than the Critique, fell stillborn as well. In the second edition there is even less "coquetting" with Hegel's mode of expression, but the movement of thought is the same, i.e., from the simple, abstract to the complex, concrete.
As I’m sure you know, Marx wrote an appendix to ch.1, Die Wertform, for the "non-dialectical" reader. Here's the back and forth between him and Fred [i.e., Engels -- RL] in regards to it:
Fred [i.e., Engels]: "The second sheet especially bears rather strong marks of your carbuncles, but that cannot be altered now and I do not think you should do anything more about it in an addendum, for, after all, the philistine is not accustomed to this sort of abstract thought and certainly will not cudgel his brains for the sake of the form of value." (Marx and Engels Collected Works, 1987, vol. 42, p.381)
He later goes on:
"In these more abstract developments you have committed the great mistake of not making the sequence of thought clear by a larger number of small sections and separate headings. You ought to have dealt with this part in the manner of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia, with short paragraphs, every dialectical transition marked by a special heading and so far as possible all excurses and mere illustrations printed in a special type. The thing would have looked rather like a schoolbook, but it would have been made much more comprehensible to a very large class of readers. For the people, even the learned section, are no longer at all accustomed to this kind of thinking and one must facilitate it for them in every possible way." (Marx and Engels Collected Works, 1987, vol. 42, p.382)
On 22 June, Marx replied to Engels. He began by expressing the hope that "the bourgeoisie will remember my carbuncles all the rest of their lives," and continues later in the letter as follows:
"As
to the development of the value-form I
have and have not followed
your advice, in order to behave dialectically in this respect as
well; i.e. I have: 1. written an appendix in
which I present the same thing as
simply and pedagogically as possible, and 2. followed your
advice and divided each step in the development into §§, etc.
with separate headings. In
the preface I then tell the 'non-dialectical' reader
that he should skip pages x-y and
read the appendix instead. Here not merely philistines are
concerned but youth eager for knowledge, etc. Besides, the
matter is too decisive for the whole book." (Marx
and Engels Collected Works, 1987, vol. 42, p.385) [https://www.marxists.org/
The problem is not with the dialectic presentation, which is Hegel's "stripped of its mystical form." The problem is with the difficulty of dialectics, in its mystical form or not. Marx clearly expressed his issues with Hegel from the mid-late 1840s on. But he never abandoned, despite modifying, Hegel's method of inquiry. He couldn't, if he wanted to remain a dialectician: "Hegel's dialectic is the basic form of all dialectic...." [Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868.]
You:
"I am far from convinced you can successfully make that distinction based on what I read (yesterday). Abstractions don't leap out at us; they have to be apprehended somehow by human beings. In that case, the distinction between 'real' and 'formal' abstractions is, I think, a distinction without a difference. Again, I won't summarise my counter-arguments here (and for the above reasons)."
The difference is that formal abstractions do not require a material process in order to be apprehended. All they require is an analytical brain capable of making distinctions. Individual commodities can be empirically observed in isolation from one another and then their "common features" can be brought to together by the formal abstractor. Value is a real abstraction because brute empiricism and analytical distinction is not enough. You cannot look at a commodity and determine whether or not it is a bearer of value. It presents itself to you as a sensuous thing, a use-value. To know if it is a use-value with a value, the commodity has to go through a material process "independent of the wills" of human beings. I think there is a distinction with a difference here.
I apologize if you have already, but can you get me to place where you make your pitch for the Aristotle-Kant-Scotsman dialectic?
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find those Smith-Rosenthal articles without paying $30 for them. Gotta give Rosenthal credit for the "Hegel Decoder" sobriquet. Pretty funny…..and accurate in a non-satirical way. Smith makes Hegel clear, at least to me.
To which I replied:
Since you ignored about 90% of my previous e-mail I don't think there is any point continuing this correspondence.
To which MS replied:
I'm sorry you feel that way. About 70% of your last email dealt with the importance of the "coquetted" comment from the Afterword. I quoted your conclusion and then offered an alternative explanation. You treat a mode of expression as if it were identical to a method of inquiry. The results of a method of inquiry can be expressed in different modes without any change to the method used to obtain said results. Any two expositors can express results, gained by using an identical method, differently. Marx never said what was of great use to him was Hegel's (ridiculous) mode of expression. He said: "What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel’s Logic..."
Had I bothered to respond to the above, I'd have said:
MS, you quote Marx's (unpublished) words: -- "What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel’s Logic..." from over ten years earlier!
First, I am not denying that Hegel had been important to Marx, but he wasn't twelve years later when he came to publish Das Kapital. How do we know? Marx very helpfully added a summary of his "method" and "the dialectic method" (quoted earlier) in which not one atom of Hegel is to be found. And yet Marx still calls this "my method". So, clearly his "method" no longer included anything from Hegel, the opposite of what he said in 1858.
Second, although Marx's unpublished work is important, it can't take precedence over his published work. Marx did not publish that letter (from 1858), but he did publish that summary.
Our correspondence petered out after that, but we began another round on Quora (in the comments section), here:
However, we merely covered familiar ground in those comments, still talking past one another. Several of the points I raised were left unanswered.
Exchange #8 -- 26/03/2020:
MS:
I just read over your last comment. I'll try to address some of the central points.
The issue with your so-called "smoking gun" from the 1873 Postscript is that it is more of a "smoldering gun." It has been interpreted in different ways by different readers. Some even take it as positive proof that Marx returned to Hegel. He clearly states that he resuscitated the dead dog when he was writing Capital even though it was unpopular to do so. At the same time, he clearly states that his method is different from Hegel's. One of the differences, not mentioned in the Postscript, is Marx's issue with the "presuppositionless" method of the "German School." This is a failure of idealism in that such a beginning for a scientific enquiry is too far removed from material reality to be explained. On the other hand, the crude empiricism of Adam Smith is unacceptable for being too materialistic and failing to analyze how the content of material reality takes place within a particular social form.
My point: The 1873 Postscript is not the knock down proof you want it be. It might be knock down proof for you. But you have an idiosyncratic reading that overemphasizes what you like and ignores what you don't. The charitable interpretation is that the Postscript is ambiguous towards Hegel, both complimentary and critical.
As far as the Russian's explication of "the dialectic[al] method" in the Postscript, it is referring to historical dialectics. Let’s look at it:
"The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it."
First, I must point out the author's appeal to the concept of necessity as a justification for the present social order and as a justification for the transition to the next -- via the historical dialectal of social forms. In the systematic dialectic of economic categories, transition occurs on the same model of necessity. I find it strange you (at least implicitly) heap praise on the Russian fellow for appealing to necessity and disdain on me for doing the same. Perhaps if this Russian chap and Marx were still alive today you could coach them up on the goddess Ananke (you know I'm an interminable smartass… please take my sh*t talking with a grain salt). [Link added -- RL.]
More importantly, this passage is referring to historical transitions or diachronic movements over time. Systematic dialectics, what I am defending, can be seen as a synchronic (immanent) critique of a specific social form of production and exchange. The two, historical and systematic, dialectal methods are related but different. The former sets the stage (or is the point of departure) for the latter, while the latter is a fine-grained explanation of the dominant social form in its current moment, which justifies the necessary movement of history to the next stage.
I don't have an issue with "the dialectic[al] method" qua historical dialects that the Russian articulates. Its language is a little deterministic, which I don't care for. And he paints a picture of the dialectical method more than he actual explains it. That is why I do not prop it up as the be all-end all of Marx's dialectical method in Capital, as you (seem to) do. All-in-all, it is a fair description, suitable for a Postscript.
What it clearly is not is an explanation of Marx's method of systematic dialectics, which Marx (insufficiently) lays out here: (3) The method of political economy. He explains why he omitted its publication here: Preface.
That’s why I'm "dismissive" of the Postscript in our comments. It misses the mark of what I'm defending.
As far as coquetting, there is a clear move away from Hegelian language in the Grundrisse and the Critique of Political Economy to the First German Edition of Capital to the French Edition. But there is no movement away from systematic dialectics. Marx would've needed to completely rewrite Capital Vol. 1 to enact the "root and branch" break with Hegel, as you claim. The all-too-human truth is that Marx was disappointed with the difficulty that readers were having with Capital and with the 1859 Critique before it, as proven by his letters to Engels and others during the time. This is the reason Marx stopped flirting with Hegel's language. But it doesn't change the fact that Hegelian logic is still all over the text…albeit more hidden as time went on.
You:
"He mentions members of the Scottish Historical School many more times than he mentions Hegel in his published and unpublished work (after the late 1840s), and Aristotle and Kant as many times as Hegel."
If I were not such a chivalrous gentleman, I'd say this claim was made in bad faith.
If you include Smith in the Scottish Historical School, yeah, I guess it's technically true. But I can produce 10 instances of Marx calling Smith some variation of an idiot for every single time Marx agrees with Smith.
Aristotle probably gets equal mention to Hegel. I don't try to downplay the significant influence of The Philosopher on Marx (and Hegel). Both thinkers appeal to formal causality and have a realist ontology.
The references to Kant are more implicit, I think. There's a strong argument that the first three chapter as they pertain to the logic of simple circulation, which fails to capture the logic of capital circulation because of its pure formal character, is Kantian. But this demonstrates the inability to understand capital as the "automatic subject" through "Verstand" or finite thinking, i.e., it is not positive but a critical use of Kant.
If you want to claim Kant influenced Marx in terms of historical dialectics, I'd need proof. Marx praises Pastor Richard Jones' understanding of history more than Kant's.
I have to leave it there for now….
I now reply as follows:
MS: "The issue with your so-called 'smoking gun' from the 1873 Postscript is that it is more of a 'smoldering gun.'"
In fact, it is a signed confession which involved Marx handing over the said gun with his fingerprints all over it. He did that when he said the following:
"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method...Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Quoted earlier on this page.]
There are several things worth underlining about this signed confession (the only one such that Marx published and endorsed in his entire life): Marx not only calls this "my method" -- not a "re-hash or reinterpretation of my method", but "the dialectic method". Furthermore, Marx doesn't say this is "one aspect" of "the dialectic method", or "one version of", "part of", or "view of" it, but "the dialectic method". Not "a dialectic method" but "the dialectic method". And since it has had Hegel completely excised and still remains "the dialect method" -- according to Marx, not me -- there isn't even a tiny crack for Dialectic Mystics to try to sneak Hegel back in (upside down or 'the right way up').
MS: "It has been interpreted in different ways by different readers. Some even take it as positive proof that Marx returned to Hegel. He clearly states that he resuscitated the dead dog when he was writing Capital even though it was unpopular to do so."
Of course it has, but given Marx's very plain language, we can now see how wildly inaccurate are those that still try to make Marx say the opposite of what he specifically ruled out -- i.e., Hegel's malign influence.
MS: "He clearly states that he resuscitated the dead dog when he was writing Capital even though it was unpopular to do so."
Ok, so let's have a look at where he said that (I note you failed to quote him, and we'll soon see why):
"The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of 'Das Kapital,' it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre [epigones] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a 'dead dog.' I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell." [From here. Bold added.]
I covered this rather weak point at my site. Here it is again:
Some readers might be tempted to point to the following passage from the Afterword to the Second Edition of Das Kapital in support of the idea that Marx was still working under Hegel's influence (but only if put 'the right way up') when he wrote that classic study:
"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added. I have used the punctuation found in MECW here.]
However, Marx's use of the word "coquetted" suggests that, at best, Hegel's Logic only exercised a superficial influence on his ideas, confined merely to certain "modes of expression", and limited to just a few sections of Das Kapital (i.e., "here and there").
[Again, contrast that with what Lenin said, and with what we are about to discover concerning Marx's view of "the dialectic method".]
Marxist dialecticians often take exception to that interpretation of the Afterword, arguing that all this "coquetting" was, on Marx's own admission, confined to the chapter on value, not the rest of the book. However, that response is far from conclusive.
First of all, the punctuation in MECW (reproduced above) suggests Marx was using the chapter on value as one example among many where he had "coquetted" with Hegel's ideas, but it wasn't the only one.
Second, it would be decidedly odd if Marx had "coquetted" with Hegelian jargon in the most important chapter of the book, but had done so nowhere else. Why pick on only the most important chapter to "coquette" -- i.e., play around -- with such allegedly important concepts?
Third, as far as Marx "openly" avowing himself a pupil of Hegel, he pointedly put that comment in the past tense:
"I criticised the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, at a time when is was still the fashion. But just when I was working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, namely as a 'dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Ibid., pp.102-03. Bold emphases added. Once more, I have reproduced the punctuation used in MECW.]
This is hardly a ringing endorsement; indeed, it is equivocal, at best. Marx didn't say that he was still a pupil of Hegel, but that he once was. Of course, it might have been true that he still counted himself a pupil of Hegel when the above was written, but there is nothing in there to suggest that Marx viewed the link between his own and Hegel's work in the way Lenin had, or in the way that subsequent dialecticians have.
[Several letters that suggest Marx still counted himself as a 'pupil of Hegel' were in fact written before the Afterword was published, so in this respect they aren't relevant.]
Of course, it is possible to call a theorist a "mighty thinker" and claim to have learnt much from her/him even while disagreeing with everything they had to say. For example, I think Plato is a "mighty thinker", but I disagree with 99.99% of his ideas.
So, I am not surprised, MS, that you failed to quote Marx since he put his praise for Hegel in the past tense. And we already know that by the time he came to publish Das Kapital, he had abandoned that Christian Mystic, Hegel, root and branch.
How do we know? Marx cleared away all doubt when he added a summary of his "method" and "the dialectic method" which contained not one atom of Hegel. He even reduced Hegel to the literary equivalent of the Cheshire Cat (of Alice in Wonderland fame) by using a few Hegelian terms-of-art non-seriously, and only in a few places in his masterpiece.
It is usual to take an author's published thoughts over any they left unpublished, and, in addition, accept the precedence of their later comments over any from earlier in their writing career. Only those who seek to distort their ideas will reverse these protocols, ignore, or abandon them altogether. But that is precisely what we find is the case with those who seek to re-mystify and re-enchant Marx. Instead of beginning with the only summary of his "method" and "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life, they refer us to published remarks from decades earlier, or comments Marx thought not to publish. Why is that? If they really want to know what Marx thought in his mature years, they wouldn't do that. [I have explored their real motives in Essay Nine Part Two.]
MS: "At the same time, he clearly states that his method is different from Hegel's."
Again, I covered this point in Essay Nine Part One:
Others often point to the following passage in reply:
"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." [Ibid., p.102. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Link added.]
Of course, one can't get any more "opposite" to Hegel than to excise his ideas completely from one's own.
Again, we needn't speculate about this since the long passage above -- in which not one atom of Hegel is to be found, and which Marx nevertheless calls "the dialectic method" -- supports the above interpretation. That is indeed so if we begin with this, the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life, and ignore the failed Engels/Plekhanov/Lenin tradition of interpreting Marx as an 'inverted Hegelian'.
[I will pass no comment on Marx's remarks about "reflection" since MS didn't.]
MS: "My point: The 1873 Postscript is not the knock down proof you want it be. It might be knock down proof for you. But you have an idiosyncratic reading that overemphasizes what you like and ignores what you don't. The charitable interpretation is that the Postscript is ambiguous towards Hegel, both complimentary and critical."
Well, it won't be a 'knock-down proof' if you are determined to ignore the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life, will it? But for those of us who want to know what Marx himself thought (not what he can be made to say by those intent on re-mystifying his work), this signed confession is all the proof we need.
As far as ignoring "what I don't like" is concerned, I don't like to have irrelevant passages quoted at me by those who ignore Marx's own confession. I also don't like to see fellow Marxists look to that Mystical bumbler, Hegel, for theoretical inspiration, especially now we know Marx turned his back on him.
What I would like is for those who want to re-enchant Marxism to produce a summary of "the dialectic method" published and endorsed by Marx that is contemporaneous with, or subsequent to, the Postface to the Second Edition, that rehabilitates Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up'). Short of that, they are wasting their time.
Unfortunately for them, there isn't one, so they are wasting their time.
MS: "As far as the Russian's explication of "the dialectic[al] method" in the Postscript, it is referring to historical dialectics. Let’s look at it:
'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it.'
"First, I must point out the author's appeal to the concept of necessity as a justification for the present social order and as a justification for the transition to the next -- via the historical dialectal of social forms. In the systematic dialectic of economic categories, transition occurs on the same model of necessity. I find it strange you (at least implicitly) heap praise on the Russian fellow for appealing to necessity and disdain on me for doing the same. Perhaps if this Russian chap and Marx were still alive today you could coach them up on the goddess Ananke...
"More importantly, this passage is referring to historical transitions or diachronic movements over time. Systematic dialectics, what I am defending, can be seen as a synchronic (immanent) critique of a specific social form of production and exchange. The two, historical and systematic, dialectal methods are related but different. The former sets the stage (or is the point of departure) for the latter, while the latter is a fine-grained explanation of the dominant social form in its current moment, which justifies the necessary movement of history to the next stage." [Link added.]
There are several points in the above that require comment:
MS: "First, I must point out the author's appeal to the concept of necessity as a justification for the present social order and as a justification for the transition to the next -- via the historical dialectal of social forms. In the systematic dialectic of economic categories, transition occurs on the same model of necessity."
Smuggling Hegelianisms back into that passage as proof that it is compatible with that mystic's ideas ('the right way up') after all is no more legitimate than it would be for someone to do the following to the Book of Genesis (in order to provide support for a 'Christian' form of Darwinism):
"And God said, 'Let the living creatures evolve from common ancestors by natural selection.' So God allowed the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, evolve according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. God blessed them and said, 'Be fruitful and maximise your offspring so that only those that produce the fittest adaptations survive.' And there was evening, and there was morning -- the fifth day." [Edited misquotation of Genesis Chapter One.]
There is nothing even remotely Hegelian in the passage Marx added to the Postface, and you are only able to claim the opposite by modifying what it has to say. You wouldn't have to do that if it were plain for all to see that it did indeed contain, or express, ideas unique to Hegel.
But, what about this?
MS: "I find it strange you (at least implicitly) heap praise on the Russian fellow for appealing to necessity and disdain on me for doing the same. Perhaps if this Russian chap and Marx were still alive today you could coach them up on the goddess Ananke...."
First of all, you will struggle long and hard and to no avail to find where I "heap praise on the Russian fellow for appealing to necessity", or even imply, vaguely suggest or hint it.
Second, I have nowhere passed comment on the validity of anything that that Russian reviewer had to say; I merely point out that Marx's endorsement of his words as "the dialectic method" shoots down in flames the many attempts that have been made since Marx died to mystify his masterpiece. That summary manages to do that independently of whether or not I accept as valid any of its ideas.
Third, as I have argued elsewhere on my site, I reject all theories that appeal to any form of "necessity", whether Marx, Hegel or anyone else endorses that 'concept'. This incoherent carry over from Greek mysticism (as MS notes) is connected with that other bogus ruling-class doctrine, determinism -- on that, see the Appendix to Essay Thirteen Part Three.
Fourth, other theorists (whose 'dialectic' more closely resembled Marx's) also referred to necessity, so this 'concept' isn't something unique to Hegel. What you need to do is show that there are any ideas in that summary that were unique to Hegel.
What about this?
MS: "More importantly, this passage is referring to historical transitions or diachronic movements over time. Systematic dialectics, what I am defending, can be seen as a synchronic (immanent) critique of a specific social form of production and exchange. The two, historical and systematic, dialectal methods are related but different. The former sets the stage (or is the point of departure) for the latter, while the latter is a fine-grained explanation of the dominant social form in its current moment, which justifies the necessary movement of history to the next stage."
Maybe so, but you have yet to show that these (Hegelian) ideas are to be found anywhere in the summary.
MS: "I don't have an issue with 'the dialectic[al] method' qua historical dialects that the Russian articulates. Its language is a little deterministic, which I don't care for. And he paints a picture of the dialectical method more than he actual explains it. That is why I do not prop it up as the be all-end all of Marx's dialectical method in Capital, as you (seem to) do. All-in-all, it is a fair description, suitable for a Postscript."
Well, the important thing is not what you (or even I) think about that summary, but what Marx thought about it, and he was quite clear:
"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method...Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Quoted earlier on this page.]
Could he have been any clearer?
MS: "What it clearly is not is an explanation of Marx's method of systematic dialectics, which Marx (insufficiently) lays out here: (3) The method of political economy. He explains why he omitted its publication here: Preface.
Again, I covered this in Essay Nine Part One, and above (here it is again):
It could be argued that an earlier work, the Grundrisse (i.e., Marx (1973)), is living disproof of many of the above allegations. Well, it would be had Marx seen fit to publish it -- but he didn't, so it isn't.
But, he did publish this:
"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added. Once more, I have used the punctuation found in MECW.]
Moreover, Marx added to Das Kapital the only summary of "the dialectic method" that he published and endorsed in his entire life, which is, as we have seen, a Hegel-free zone.
So, whatever it was that happened to Marx's thinking between the writing of the Grundrisse and his publishing the second edition of Das Kapital, it clearly changed his view of Hegel's Logic -- to such an extent that its jargon became something with which he merely wished to "coquette" --, or, to be more truthful, which he wanted almost totally to ignore.
MS: "You treat a mode of expression as if it were identical to a method of inquiry. The results of a method of inquiry can be expressed in different modes without any change to the method used to obtain said results. Any two expositors can express results, gained by using an identical method, differently. Marx never said what was of great use to him was Hegel's (ridiculous) mode of expression. He said: 'What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel’s Logic...'"
As I noted earlier, too:
------------------------------
MS, you quote Marx's (unpublished) words: -- "What was of great use to me as regards method of treatment was Hegel’s Logic..." -- from over ten years earlier!
First, I am not denying that Hegel had been important to Marx, but he wasn't twelve years later when he came to publish Das Kapital. How do we know? Marx very helpfully added a summary of his "method" and "the dialectic method" (quoted earlier) in which not one atom of Hegel is to be found. And yet Marx still calls this "my method". So, clearly his "method" no longer included anything from Hegel, the opposite of what he said in 1858.
Second, although Marx's unpublished work is important, it can't take precedence over his published work. Marx did not publish that letter (from 1858), but he did publish that summary.
------------------------------
MS: "That’s why I'm 'dismissive' of the Postscript in our comments. It misses the mark of what I'm defending."
Ok, well if you want to get Marx right you'll reject that unwise approach to his published thoughts, and maybe pay heed to what he thought it wise to endorse as his "method" and "the dialectic method"; however in place of that you prioritise his unpublished remarks from over a decade earlier. And it's clear why you do this: it is the only way to can 'justify' re-mystifying his ideas.
MS: "As far as coquetting, there is a clear move away from Hegelian language in the Grundrisse and the Critique of Political Economy to the First German Edition of Capital to the French Edition. But there is no movement away from systematic dialectics. Marx would've needed to completely rewrite Capital Vol. 1 to enact the 'root and branch' break with Hegel, as you claim. The all-too-human truth is that Marx was disappointed with the difficulty that readers were having with Capital and with the 1859 Critique before it, as proven by his letters to Engels and others during the time. This is the reason Marx stopped flirting with Hegel's language. But it doesn't change the fact that Hegelian logic is still all over the text…albeit more hidden as time went on."
Well, you have yet to show that that is the case. Moreover, you ignore Marx's very clear indication that he had turned his back on that logical and philosophical incompetent, Hegel, when he came to publish Das Kapital. Marx even told us that Hegelian jargon was only to be found in a few places in that book, and he that had used them non-seriously! In order to claim what you do above, you must either conclude Marx was lying or he didn't know what he was doing.
MS: "You:
'He mentions members of the Scottish Historical School many more times than he mentions Hegel in his published and unpublished work (after the late 1840s), and Aristotle and Kant as many times as Hegel.'
"If I were not such a chivalrous gentleman, I'd say this claim was made in bad faith.
"If you include Smith in the Scottish Historical School, yeah, I guess it's technically true. But I can produce 10 instances of Marx calling Smith some variation of an idiot for every single time Marx agrees with Smith.
"Aristotle probably get equal mention to Hegel. I don’t try to downplay the significant influence of The Philosopher on Marx (and Hegel). Both thinkers appeal to formal causality and have a realist ontology.
"The references to Kant are more implicit, I think. There's a strong argument that the first three chapter as they pertain to the logic of simple circulation, which fails to capture the logic of capital circulation because of its pure formal character, is Kantian. But this demonstrates the inability to understand capital as the 'automatic subject' through 'Verstand' or finite thinking, i.e., it is not positive but a critical use of Kant."
Again, there are several points in the above that require comment:
First, I can do without the patronising tone.
Second, I made that comment in all seriousness.
When I was debating this with dialecticians over at RevLeft ten years ago, I spent an entire afternoon going through all fifty volumes of MECW (I have the entire set on my shelves), and I counted the number of times he mentioned Hegel (after the late 1840s) and the number of times he mentioned Ferguson, Millar, Anderson, Hume, Smith and Stuart, and the latter won heads down. I published the results over at RevLeft, but unfortunately that site is now all but defunct, otherwise I'd post a link. I don't propose to do that count again, although some of that material has been reproduced below (and I suspect I'd get a different result if I did the same with the MEGA edition when it is finally finished); so if you doubt me, I'll just have to live with that.
Third, I never said his remarks were always positive about Smith, for instance; so even if he bad-mouthed him, he did that too with Hegel from time to time.
Fourth, I made no claims about the number of times Marx mentioned Kant, so I am not too sure why you mentioned him.
MS: "If you want to claim Kant influenced Marx in terms of historical dialectics, I'd need proof. Marx praises Pastor Richard Jones' understanding of history more than Kant's."
in relation to Kant, what I did say was this:
In that case, and once more, Marx's "dialectic method" more closely resembled that of Aristotle, Kant and the Scottish Historical School.
I would say that Aristotle and The Scottish School most definitely influenced Marx, but I'd be more cautious over Kant.
But, where I have said that Kant influenced Marx, since Kant heavily influenced Hegel, and since both were also heavily influenced by The Scottish Historical School (which also influenced Marx), a convincing case can be, and has been made that Kant exercised a profound influence on Marx (at least in this respect, over Historical Materialism). In earlier exchanges I pointed you in the direction of where I had entered into this, but it seems you didn't follow those links. Here is that material:
Marx made plain the influence of the Scottish School in the German Ideology (erroneously calling it "English"):
"The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry." [MECW 5, p.42.]
On this see Meek (1967), and Wood (1998, 1999) -- the latter of which underlines how influential Kant's work was in this area.
This is what I have posted at RevLeft on this topic (slightly edited -- I managed to save this before RevLeft went dead):
It is not I who called them this (i.e., "The Scottish Historical Materialists"), but others, mainly Marx and Engels.
"Ronald Meek, 'The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology' [1954; collected in his Economics and Ideology and Other Essays, 1967.] Such luminaries as Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith. This influence was actually acknowledged. In The German Ideology, right after announcing their theme that 'men be in a position to live in order to be able to "make history", they say "The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry.'" [Quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[I ought to point out that the author of the above is in fact hostile to Marx and Engels, but there is little available on the Internet at present on this topic.]
Meek actually calls them the "Scottish Historical School" (p.35), but he attributes this phrase to Roy Pascal (Communist Party member, friend of Wittgenstein and translator of The German Ideology), who used it in his article 'Property and Society: The Scottish Historical School of the Eighteenth Century', Modern Quarterly, March 1938.
The full passage reads as follows:
"Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to 'make history.' But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life. Even when the sensuous world is reduced to a minimum, to a stick as with Saint Bruno [Bauer], it presupposes the action of producing the stick. Therefore in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its due importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done this, and they have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for history and consequently never an historian. The French and the English, even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, particularly as long as they remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and industry." [Quoted from here.]
In the Poverty of Philosophy, Marx also wrote:
"Let us do him this justice: Lemontey wittily exposed the unpleasant consequences of the division of labour as it is constituted today, and M. Proudhon found nothing to add to it. But now that, through the fault of M. Proudhon, we have been drawn into this question of priority, let us say again, in passing, that long before M. Lemontey, and 17 years before Adam Smith, who was a pupil of A. Ferguson, the last-named gave a clear exposition of the subject in a chapter which deals specifically with the division of labour." [MECW Volume 6, p.181. Spelling altered to conform with UK English.]
Marx refers to Ferguson repeatedly in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (MECW Volume 30, pp.264-306), as he does others of the same 'school' (e.g., Adam Smith and Dugald Stuart) throughout this work.
He does so, too, in Volume One of Das Kapital -- MECW Volume 35: pp.133, 359, 366, 367.
[He also refers to other members of that 'school', e.g., Robertson, p.529, Stuart and Smith (however, the references to these two are far too numerous to list -- check out the index!).]
Indeed, throughout Marx's entire works, the references to Smith and Stuart are also too numerous to list.
Kant's influence is outlined in the following (I owe these references to Philip Gasper):
Wood, A, (1998), 'Kant's Historical Materialism' in Kneller and Axinn, Chapter Five.
--------, (1999), Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge University Press).
Kneller, J., and Axinn, S, (1998), Autonomy And Community: Readings In Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy (State University of New York Press).
See also 'Ferguson and Hegel on the Idea of Civil Society' by Martha King -- as well as Kettler (2005).
[This comes from Essay Nine Part One, where you can find details of any of the references not fully detailed above in the Bibliography.]
As far as I am aware, this is still a heavily under-researched area of the origin of Historical Materialism, and that is because comrades are still fixated on Hegel.
Exchange #9 -- 29/04/2020:
Before I engage with MS once more, I need to underline how difficult it is arguing with fans-of-the-'dialectic'. Some will defend Engels's version of this 'theory'/'method', some will modify it, some will apply the 'dialectic' only to human development (but disagree with others exactly how that works out), others will apply it to both (and then disagree with others over that too)! They all claim they are faithfully representing Marx, and what he argued in Das Kapital, even though that isn't possible. They will berate me for criticising their specific version of this 'theory'/'method' as if I were criticising Marx himself. The overwhelming majority ignore what I have argued -- and many will act surprised when I point this out to them --, even though, in general, I pass comment on the vast bulk of what they argue. As I have pointed out in Essay One:
Another recent ploy is to argue that while it might be the case that I have examined/criticised the ideas of dialecticians A, B and C, I should have looked instead at those of X, Y and Z. Then another comrade will complain that while I might have examined the work of A, B and X, I should instead have concentrated on C, D, and Z! Yet another will then advise me to confine my attention to A, D, and W..., and so on.
Trotskyists complain if I quote Stalin or Mao's writings; Maoists and Stalinists moan if I do likewise with Trotsky's (or even with "Brezhnev era revisionists"); non-Leninist Marxists will bemoan the fact that I haven't confined my comments to the 'dialectic' in Marx's work, or Hegel's, advising me to ignore the confused or "simplistic" work of Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Trotsky!
Of course, because these comrades haven't read my work, none of them know that I have in fact examined the work of A, B, C, D,..., W, X, Y and Z (and that includes Marx and Hegel -- as well as the work of others many of these comrades have never even heard of!). In fact, since most of the material dialecticians produce is highly repetitive (check out Essay Two for scores of examples!), this often means that reading A's work is tantamount to studying almost everyone else's, too!
However, the most common complaint on the Internet from academic, or quasi-academic, Marxists is that I have ignored more substantive theorists, such as Lukacs, Marcuse, Adorno, Habermas, Žižek, Ollman, and the like. [I have explained why I have done this, for example, here.] The work of several of these HCD-theorists will anyway be examined in later stages of this project. [Indeed, parts of Ollman's work have already been examined -- as have Marcuse's and Žižek's.]
MS:
I'm still unclear about your criticism of abstraction (at least as it relates to what I have to say). I've read over Essay Three multiple times.
Take this line for instance:
"At this point it is also worth adding that the usual justification for assuming that philosophical abstractions exist (somewhere?) -- that is, that they help philosophers and scientists account for general features of the world, and hence for our ability to understand nature -- in fact turns out to be the very thing that prevents them from doing this, as we will soon see." [Quoting me, form here.]
Abstraction is not used in this sense by Marx or any of the authors I reference. "General features of the world" is not what we (Marx and gang) are talking about when we say we're abstracting. We are talking about a very specific, historically determined society where wealth takes the form of an immense collection of commodities. Abstraction helps us understand this society, not general features of the world, nature, or society.
Lenin's nonsense is nonsense. Like freshman level bad philosophy. Read Jairus Banaji's essay "From Commodity to Capital: Hegel's Dialectic in Marx's Capital." He criticizes Lenin's proposition "John is a man" no less than you, but for not understanding Hegelian logic. Lenin is no authority on Hegel. He had literally just read Hegel once. So when Lenin says something like:
"Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other."
he is deeply confused. Marx, following Hegel, does not separate essence (value) from appearance (money). That is impossible, if the point is to explain either essence or appearance. Marx demonstrates how value must appear as money, the necessary form of appearance of value. Appearance is essential to essence. Value does not exist without money. There's no way to "counterpose one to the other" [e.g., value (essence) to money (appearance)-MS]. Marx starts with the most abstract conception of value and concretizes it. In this sense, value becomes real in unison with its form appearance, not in separation from it. When Marx abstracts the value aspect of the commodity from the use-value aspect of the commodity in the first pages of Capital, he is not "separating the essence from the appearance." Within a single commodity, the use-value aspect is not the appearance of the essence (value) that gets abstracted away. Value does not appear in a single commodity. That is impossible. Value appears in the use-value of another commodity, money. Nowhere in Capital does Marx separate money (appearance) from value (essence) by abstracting. He does the exact opposite. [Sent via e-mail]
My reply to the above is as follows.
MS: "I'm still unclear about your criticism of abstraction (at least as it relates to what I have to say). I've read over Essay Three multiple times."
That isn't surprising since MS actually read the Summary of Essay Three Part One, which is about 5% of the length of Essay Three Part One. That's like reading Marx's Wages, Price and Profit and thinking you had read Das Kapital. [And no, I am not comparing myself to Marx, just making the point that an introductory Essay, written for those who find the main Essays too difficult or too long, can't be viewed as a definitive version of my ideas.] I even say this at the top of each such Essay, and I highlight it in bold, like this:
This is an Introductory Essay, which has been written for those who find the main Essays either too long or too difficult. It doesn't pretend to be comprehensive since it is simply a summary of the core ideas presented at this site. Most of the supporting evidence and argument found in each of the main Essays has been omitted. Anyone wanting more details, or who would like to examine my arguments in full, should consult the Essay for which this is a summary. [In this particular case, that can be found here.]
My case against abstractionism is presented at length in Essay Three Parts One and Two (which have a combined length of 250,000 words). MS hasn't read these Essays, so it is hardly surprising he fails to understand my criticisms of this ancient, time-worn and defective theory, abstractionism.
As I have pointed out above, I don't blame MS for not reading those two Essays; their length alone is daunting enough (combined, they are the equivalent of a 500 page book!), but if MS wants to debate this topic with me, that is what he'll need to do, otherwise we are both wasting each other's time. I am certainly not going to reproduce here, in these replies, tens of thousands of words from where I enter into this topic in PhD level detail and complexity, and triple PhD length. I will, however, quote several sections (long and short) from those Essays when I think they might be helpful, or I'll post links to where I cover a given topic in more detail.
MS: "Take this line for instance:
'At this point it is also worth adding that the usual justification for assuming that philosophical abstractions exist (somewhere?) -- that is, that they help philosophers and scientists account for general features of the world, and hence for our ability to understand nature -- in fact turns out to be the very thing that prevents them from doing this, as we will soon see.' [Quoting me, from here.]
"Abstraction is not used in this sense by Marx or any of the authors I reference. 'General features of the world' is not what we (Marx and gang) are talking about when we say we're abstracting. We are talking about a very specific, historically determined society where wealth takes the form of an immense collection of commodities. Abstraction helps us understand this society, not general features of the world, nature, or society."
MS will search long and hard and to no avail for anywhere in my Essays where I allege this of Marx. What I am speaking about in the above paragraph is the ancient philosophical theory of abstraction, and I am summarising there about forty thousand words found in both Essays. MS needs to remember that I am dealing there with the classical DM-theory of abstraction (found in Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and countless 'lesser' DM-clones since), not the sanitised version found in the work of Academic Marxists.
Having said that, it is also clear that these academic dialecticians are applying their sanitised version of this ancient theory (cleared of all the DM-crudities one finds in the work of Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and the aforementioned 'lesser' DM-clones). As MS himself says, this antiseptic version has been applied to "a very specific, historically determined society where wealth takes the form of an immense collection of commodities. Abstraction helps us understand this society, not general features of the world, nature, or society." But, it is the same defective theory, only now applied to a much narrower slice of "the general features of the world". If the method is defective at source, it is irrelevant where, or to what, it is applied. Error doesn't evaporate when its focus is narrowed.
Of course, we have no idea what Marx meant by his use of this mythical process since he failed to tell us. Sure, he wrote a few vague things about 'abstraction', but as I have pointed out in Essay Three Parts One and Two (MS might be operating under the false belief that I haven't read Marx on this topic -- in fact I quote him at length in these two Essays, these being just two examples where I quote Marx on 'abstraction'):
As dialecticians themselves tend to argue: a reference to (and use of) general terms ('concepts'?) in the pursuit of knowledge is also required since neither science nor dialectics can rely solely on "surface appearances" or "immediate experience". The idea seems to be that while the latter might relate to, or temporarily shape, our initial view of things, philosophical and scientific knowledge both seek to locate and integrate nature and society's underlying law-governed "essences" by the use of further and more refined abstractions (or generalisations), subsequently tested in practice.
These ideas can be found in Marx's expressed opinions, too:
"[S]cience would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided." [Marx (1981), p.956.]
"It would seem right to start with the real and concrete, with the actual presupposition, e.g. in political economy to start with the population, which forms the basis and the subject of the whole social act of production. Closer consideration shows, however, that this is wrong. Population is an abstraction if, for instance, one disregards the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn remain an empty phrase if one does not know the elements on which they are based, e.g. wage labour, capital, etc. These presuppose exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage labour, without value, money, price, etc. If one were to start with population, it would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and through closer definition one would arrive analytically at increasingly simple concepts; from the imagined concrete, one would move to more and more tenuous abstractions until one arrived at the simplest determinations. From there it would be necessary to make a return journey until one finally arrived once more at population, which this time would be not a chaotic conception of a whole, but a rich totality of many determinations and relations.
"The first course is the one taken by political economy historically at its inception. The 17th-century economists, for example, always started with the living whole, the population, the nation, the State, several States, etc., but analysis always led them in the end to the discovery of a few determining abstract, general relations, such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these individual moments were more or less clearly deduced and abstracted, economic systems were evolved which from the simple [concepts], such as labour, division of labour, need, exchange value, advanced to the State, international exchange and world market.
"The latter is obviously the correct scientific method. The concrete is concrete because it is a synthesis of many determinations, thus a unity of the diverse. In thinking, it therefore appears as a process of summing-up, as a result, not as the starting point, although it is the real starting point, and thus also the starting point of perception and conception. The first procedure attenuates the comprehensive visualisation to abstract determinations, the second leads from abstract determinations by way of thinking to the reproduction of the concrete.
"Hegel accordingly arrived at the illusion that the real was the result of thinking synthesising itself within itself, delving ever deeper into itself and moving by its inner motivation; actually, the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is simply the way in which thinking assimilates the concrete and reproduces it as a mental concrete. This is, however, by no means the process by which the concrete itself originates. For example, the simplest economic category, e.g. exchange value, presupposes population, population which produces under definite conditions, as well as a distinct type of family, or community, or State, etc. Exchange value cannot exist except as an abstract, one-sided relation of an already existing concrete living whole.
But as a category exchange value leads an antediluvian existence. Hence to the kind of consciousness -- and philosophical consciousness is precisely of this kind -- which regards the comprehending mind as the real man, and only the comprehended world as such as the real world -- to this consciousness, therefore, the movement of categories appears as the real act of production -- which unfortunately receives an impulse from outside -- whose result is the world; and this (which is however again a tautology) is true in so far as the concrete totality regarded as a conceptual totality, as a mental concretum, is IN FACT a product of thinking, of comprehension; yet it is by no means a product of the self-evolving concept whose thinking proceeds outside and above perception and conception, but of the assimilation and transformation of perceptions and images into concepts. The totality as a conceptual totality seen by the mind is a product of the thinking mind, which assimilates the world in the only way open to it, a way which differs from the artistic-, religious- and practical-intellectual assimilation of this world. The real subject remains outside the mind and independent of it -- that is to say, so long as the mind adopts a purely speculative, purely theoretical attitude. Hence the subject, society, must always be envisaged as the premiss of conception even when the theoretical method is employed.
"But have not these simple categories also an independent historical or natural existence preceding that of the more concrete ones? Ça dépend. [That depends -- RL.] Hegel, for example, correctly takes possession, the simplest legal relation of the subject, as the point of departure of the philosophy of law. No possession exists, however, before the family or the relations of lord and servant are evolved, and these are much more concrete relations. It would, on the other hand, be correct to say that families and entire tribes exist which have as yet only possession and not property. The simpler category appears thus as a relation of simpler family or tribal associations with regard to property. In a society which has reached a higher stage the category appears as the simpler relation of a developed organisation. The more concrete substratum underlying the relation of possession is, however, always presupposed. One can conceive an individual savage who has possessions; possession in this case, however, is not a legal relation. It is incorrect that historically possession develops into the family. On the contrary, possession always presupposes this 'more concrete legal category'. Still, one may say that the simple categories express relations in which the less developed concrete may have realised itself without as yet having posited the more complex connection or relation which is conceptually expressed in the more concrete category; whereas the more developed concrete retains the same category as a subordinate relation.
"Money can exist and has existed in history before capital, banks, wage labour, etc., came into being. In this respect it can be said, therefore, that the simpler category can express relations predominating in a less developed whole or subordinate relations in a more developed whole, relations which already existed historically before the whole had developed the aspect expressed in a more concrete category. To that extent, the course of abstract thinking which advances from the elementary to the combined corresponds to the actual historical process." [Marx (1986), pp.37-39. (This links to a PDF.) Bold emphases alone added. capitals in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. This passage will be examine in more detail in Part Two.]
"Beginnings are always difficult in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty. That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised. The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society, the commodity-form of the product of labour -- or value-form of the commodity -- is the economic cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic anatomy." [Marx (1996), pp.7-8. Bold emphasis added. I have modified the first sentence to agree with the Penguin edition since it reads much better.]
In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does in the above passages; he merely gestures at it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians. This isn't to disparage Marx. Das Kapital is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an even more impressive work had the baleful influence of Traditional Thought been kept totally at bay. [Yes, I know the first quotation above is from the Grundrisse, not Das Kapital!]
What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity. Anyone who reads the above passage can actually see him doing this. They don't need to do a brain scan on Marx (even if he were still alive!), nor apply psychometric tests to follow his argument -- or, indeed, re-create these alleged 'abstractions', which they would have to do if the 'process of abstraction' were something we all do privately in our heads. And, they certainly don't have to copy Marx's supposed moves -- and they most certainly can't copy them, for Marx failed to say what he had actually done with the concepts/words he employed, or how he had 'mentally processed' them (if in fact he had done so!). Indeed, his 'instructions' describing how to abstract the "population" are even less useful than John Lennon's famous remark that to find the USA you just had to turn left at Greenland. Hence, no one could possibly emulate Marx here since there are no usable details -- which, of course, suggests that Marx didn't in fact do what he thought he had done, or proposed to do, otherwise, careful thinker that he was, he would have spelt them out. More significantly, no one since has been able to reconstruct these mythical 'mental' moves, or show that their own weak gesture at applying this method is exactly the same as the one used by Marx -- or even that it yields the same results as those allegedly achieved by Marx (as noted earlier).
In fact, it is quite apparent from the above passage that Marx had forgotten about his own refutation of this very process! [On that, see here, and again in the next sub-section, below.]
Of course, none of this is surprising. As we have seen, abstractionists become rather hazy when it comes to supplying the details of this mysterious 'process'; that is why, after 2400 years of this metaphysical fairy-tale having been spun -- over and above the sort of vague gesture theorists like Ollman offer their readers --, no one seems able to say what this 'process' actually is!
By way of contrast, the actual method Marx employed (as noted above: we can actually see him doing this on the page -- i.e., indulging in an intelligent and novel use of language) is precisely how the greatest scientists have always proceeded. In their work, they construct arguments in an open arena, in a public language -- albeit this is often accompanied by a novel use of words --, which can be checked by anyone who cares to do so. This can't be done with Ollman's mythical "mental constructs".
Short of accessing the alleged 'mental processes' that Marx is supposed to have 'used', MS can't possibly know what Marx did (or even if he actually did anything at all in his head in this regard), nor can any of the other academic dialecticians to whom MS alludes.
But, we don't need to know what went on in Marx's head; all we need do is read the very material words he committed to paper (and draw a polite veil over his use of the word "abstraction", rather like we ignore Newton's appeal to God and measurements of the Great Pyramid of Giza in support of his theory of gravitation).
The problem with 'abstraction' conceived in the way that MS does was pointed out by Bertell Ollman in his study of Marx's ideas on this topic (quoted earlier (but slightly edited with a few new paragraphs added), which MS just ignored, even though it torpedoes this aspect of 'systematic dialectics' well below the waterline):
Unfortunately, it is impossible for you [MS], or anyone else, to check these 'abstractions' -- even if they could be formed (which I question, too). You have no idea whether your hidden 'abstractions' are the same as anyone else's, never mind whether they are the same as Marx's. No good appealing to the words you or he use, since, given this theory, those words depend for their meaning on a further layer of 'abstractions', which can't be checked either. An appeal to memory would be to no avail here, too, since memories are also supposed to make use of 'abstractions' which would themselves be subject to the very same searching doubts. There is in fact no way to break into this 'abstractive circle', no way to check it or them. So, for all you know, for all anyone knows, Marx's 'abstractions' could be completely different from yours, and yours could change from moment to moment. You have no way to check. But, that isn't the case with words expressed in a public domain, and that is why I keep referring to common nouns, not these mythical 'abstractions'.
The above is in fact an application of Wittgenstein's 'Private Language Argument' (which I develop in detail in Part Two), which exposes a fatal flaw in the traditional theory of abstraction (and the account of 'abstraction' given in dialectics), a factor Bertell Ollman noticed (but which he has so far failed to resolve). Here is what I had to say about this point in Part Two:
Furthermore, even if there were clear or plausible answers to such questions, another annoying 'difficulty' would block our path: it would still be impossible for anyone to check these abstractions to see if they tallied with anyone else's -- or, for that matter, ascertain whether or not they had 'abstracted' them right. In fact, the word "right" can gain no grip in such circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems right will be right. But for something to be right it needs to be checked against a standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one judging. But, there is no such standard. Given this theory, everyone's notion of a cat will be private to each individual abstractor. They have no way of checking their abstractions with those of anyone else, which means, of course, there can be no standard abstract cat to serve as an exemplar, and hence nothing by means of which anyone's abstractions can be deemed right. Later in this Essay I will be pointing out the following in relation to Andrew Sayer's and Bertell Ollman's 'theory of abstraction':
True to form, Andrew Sayer's attempt to characterise this 'process' [of 'abstraction'] reveals that he, too, thinks it is an individualised, if not private skill in relation to which we all seem to be 'natural' experts:
"The sense in which the term ['abstract' -- RL] is used here is different [from its ordinary use -- RL]; an abstract concept, or an abstraction, isolates in thought a one-sided or partial aspect of an object. [In a footnote, Sayer adds 'My use of "abstract" and "concrete" is, I think, equivalent to Marx's' (p.277, note 3).]" [Sayer (1992), p.87. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis alone added.]
As is the case with Ollman, and, indeed, everyone else who has pontificated about this obscure 'process', we aren't told how we manage to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction of a 'private language'.
Indeed, this is something Ollman himself pointed out:
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003), p.63. Bold emphases added.]
Well, it remains to be seen if Professor Ollman can solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries -- that is, those who have even so much as acknowledged it exists!
It is to Ollman's considerable credit, therefore, that he is at least aware of it.
[In fact, Ollman is the very first dialectician I have encountered (in over thirty years) who even so much as acknowledges this 'difficulty'! Be this as it may, I have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more details.]
Of course, none of this fancy footwork would be necessary if Ollman recognised that even though Marx gestured in its direction, Historical Materialism doesn't need this obscure 'process' (that is, where any sense can be made of it) -- or, indeed, if he acknowledged that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and language completely undercuts abstractionism.
Naturally, this means that this process can't form the basis of 'objective' science (and that remains the case even if we substitute "idealisation" for "abstraction"). Plainly, that is because (i) No one has access to the results of anyone else's 'mental machinations' (or idealisations), (ii) There appear to be no rules governing the production of these abstractions --, or, indeed, governing the entire 'process' itself --, and, as we have just seen, (iii) There is no standard of right, here.
By way of contrast, in the real world agreement is achieved by the use of publicly accessible general terms already in common use, words that were in the vernacular long before a single one of us was a twinkle in our (hypothetical) ancestral abstractors' eyes.
[That is, of course, just a roundabout way of saying that "abstraction" is a highly misleading euphemism for subjective, uncheckable idiosyncratic classification.]
It would be interesting to see how you, too, propose to escape from the solipsistic dungeon into which this theory has deposited you.
Seventeen years later and we are still waiting for Ollman's solution. I am not holding my breath...
Several weeks later we are still waiting for MS's solution, or even some recognition that this is a problem.
MS: Lenin's nonsense is nonsense. Like freshman level bad philosophy. Read Jairus Banaji's essay "From Commodity to Capital: Hegel's Dialectic in Marx's Capital." He criticizes Lenin's proposition "John is a man" no less than you, but for not understanding Hegelian logic. Lenin is no authority on Hegel. He had literally just read Hegel once. So when Lenin says something like:
"Here already we have the elements, the germs, the concepts of necessity, of objective connection in nature, etc. Here already we have the contingent and the necessary, the phenomenon and the essence; for when we say: John is a man, Fido is a dog, this is a leaf of a tree, etc., we disregard a number of attributes as contingent; we separate the essence from the appearance, and counterpose the one to the other."
he is deeply confused. Marx, following Hegel, does not separate essence (value) from appearance (money). That is impossible, if the point is to explain either essence or appearance. Marx demonstrates how value must appear as money, the necessary form of appearance of value. Appearance is essential to essence. Value does not exist without money. There's no way to "counterpose one to the other" [e.g., value (essence) to money (appearance) -- MS]. Marx starts with the most abstract conception of value and concretizes it. In this sense, value becomes real in unison with its form appearance, not in separation from it. When Marx abstracts the value aspect of the commodity from the use-value aspect of the commodity in the first pages of Capital, he is not "separating the essence from the appearance." Within a single commodity, the use-value aspect is not the appearance of the essence (value) that gets abstracted away. Value does not appear in a single commodity. That is impossible. Value appears in the use-value of another commodity, money. Nowhere in Capital does Marx separate money (appearance) from value (essence) by abstracting. He does the exact opposite.
In fact, as I have shown (here and here), Hegel's use of "The rose is red" is no less lame Philosophy. The rest of what MS says reads into Marx's work ideas that aren't there. I have challenged MS before to prove there are such things as "essences" to begin with, but he has yet to rise to that challenge. In Essay Three Part Two (here), I have also criticised the traditional distinction drawn between 'appearance' and 'essence'/'reality' (one of the "ruling ideas" of the ruling class), which MS and Lenin both take for granted. Again, I don't intend to repeat that material here.
MS also sent me a document that entered into the 'process of abstraction' in more detail (I have reproduced it in full in the Appendix):
Let me clarify a few points about the nature of abstractions. For Marx, the term delineates a mental process undertaken by thinking subjects. He did not feel the need justify this procedure epistemologically or metaphysically by offering a theory of truth. Marx thought thoughts happened in that thinking box between the ears called 'the mind.'
In his own words:
"[T]he method of arising form the abstract to the concrete is the only way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind." (Grundrisse, pg. 101)
Tying this claim to failed philosophical attempts to justify "the mind" and, thereby, turning this into an epistemological, metaphysical, or linguistic debate over the nature of a "thinking box" called "the mind" is a cheap philosophical trick. Marx is not some grad school student defending a theory of truth. He is giving a critique of political economy. Thus, he simple takes it for granted that mental functions occur in our heads, instead of in our stomachs or hearts, and gets on with the business of critiquing. I sleep well at night with the same commonplace understanding of thoughts occurring "in the mind," even if I know (as Marx knew) that such a "place" cannot be given a proper philosophical defense. Thought reproduces the concrete "in the brain" expresses the same thing as thought reproduces the concrete "in the mind."
First, I devoted no little space in Essay Three Part One to showing that this is indeed what Marx and subsequent dialecticians mean by the mythical process of 'abstraction', but other than a few vague gestures, we aren't told how this process actually works, or how it avoids the problems raised by Ollman (which were quoted earlier). Once more, I went over this in detail in both Parts of Essay Three. I also spent much time in Essay Thirteen Part Three taking apart the traditional and metaphysical Platonic/Christian/Cartesian theory of 'the mind' that both Marx and MS accept, just as I also heavily criticised the idea that thinking takes place in our heads. I am not going to reproduce here the 100,000+ words I devoted to that topic!
Second, whenever comrades raised such issues with me over at RevLeft, and criticised my (Wittgensteinian) attempt to turn this into a "linguistic debate" I pointed out that they had made the mistake of using language to make that very point! I then encouraged them to try to make the same point but avoid using any language this time. Oddly enough, none of them took me up on that challenge. I am now happy to extend it to MS. [His failure to do so will perhaps convince him that this is an issue over the use of language.]
I next quoted Marx's words at the above comrades:
"One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases alone added.]
Marx not only identifies thought with language he recommends we avoid the sort of obscure jargon philosophers use -- since it is based on abstraction, which distorts reality (not only have subsequent Marxist dialecticians studiously ignored this, but Marx himself forgot about it in later work!) -- and he recommends we return to using ordinary language. I have followed that very Wittgensteinian suggestion in all my work, and have explored it in this respect in Essay Thirteen Part Three (link above), where I show that our ordinary use of language actually prevents us drawing such metaphysical conclusions about 'the mind', 'thought' and the brain.
MS: My point: Abstraction is a kind of thinking. Imagining is a kind of thinking. Planning is a kind of thinking. Remembering is a kind of thinking. All of these mental functions are similar. All are different modes of thinking appropriate to different forms of thoughts. Abstractions, in particular, are abstractions from the way the material world immediately presents itself to us as thinking beings. Neither Marx nor I are making a "dogmatic imposition" when we say that abstraction is the kind of thinking appropriate to the analysis of economic forms (Capital, pg. 90) and, then, proceed by abstracting. If I said planning is the kind of thinking appropriate to the analysis of grocery shopping, would you accuse me making the "dogmatic imposition" of planning, that is, if I hadn't already justified planning philosophically?
This is indeed a "dogmatic imposition" because the details are consistently omitted and it is merely asserted that this is what we all supposedly do when no evidence or argument is offered in support -- and when the serious difficulties this approach faces are simply ignored as if they weren't there, or as if anti-abstractionists (like the young Marx, or the mature Wittgenstein) had nothing to say about this mythical process. Here are just a few of the serious problems I have pointed out in Essay Three (both Parts):
As we shall also see, the nature of this mysterious 'process' is difficult to describe, even if you believe in it. [Several examples of DM-theorists trying to explain this mysterious 'process' are given above and in Appendix B.]
Here are just a few of the serious problems it faces:
(1) If the 'process of abstraction' is indeed a 'mental activity', how would it be possible for each abstractor to know if they had arrived at the correct abstract concept of anything at all, or, indeed, anything in particular? Indeed, the notion that there could be a 'correct' abstraction loses all meaning if there is no way to check. With what, or with whom, could any of the supposed results be checked? Since this 'process' is supposed to take place in 'the mind', no one would have access to a single 'abstraction' produced by anyone else, nor would each abstractor have access to the 'abstractions' they produced only a few moments earlier. An appeal to memory would be to no avail since memories are also supposed to make use of abstractions, which would themselves be subject to the very same doubts. There is in fact no way to break into this 'abstractive circle', no way to check.
An appeal to the existence of a public language would be to no avail, either. Again, if each abstractor 'processes' their 'abstractions' in the privacy of their own heads, no one would be able to tell whether Abstractor A meant the same as Abstractor B by his or her use of the relevant words (or the relevant 'concepts' -- like "Substance", "Being", "Nothing", "The Population", "abstract labour", etc.) drawn from the vernacular, or elsewhere. Definitions would be no help, either, since, just like memory, they also employ 'abstractions' -- so, they would also be subject to the same awkward questions. For how can Abstractor A know what Abstractor B means by any of the abstract terms he/she has processed without access to her/his 'mind'? Abstractor B can't point to anything which is 'the meaning' of a single abstraction he or she might be trying to define, so he/she can't use an ostensive definition to help Abstractor A understand what he/she means (even if meanings could be established that way). No particular, or no singular term, can give the meaning of any abstraction or abstract term under scrutiny (as those who accept this theory intend, not as I have criticised it -- so I am not contradiction my claim that these abstractions are really the Proper Names of abstract particulars). That being so, the same 'difficulties' would confront the general terms supposedly used in any definition used to that end, and so on...
And, it is even less use appealing to the 'logic of concepts', which drives 'thought' along, as, say, a staunch follower of Hegel might attempt to do. Not only is it unclear what Hegel's terminology actually means (any who doubt this might like to try to explain, say, these passages), but even if all he had ever said were crystal clear, since he was the first to concoct this 'dialectical process', 'thought' can't inevitably be driven along these lines -- otherwise we wouldn't have needed Hegel to deliver the good news to us. Of course, it could be argued that he was the first to reveal what we all somehow manage to do without realising it, or, even, that he revealed what 'the speculative philosopher' does, or should do, whether or not he/she realises it, too. [Or, to be more honest, this is what Hegel, or anyone else who has swallowed his ideas, gestures at doing, by doling out page-after-page of the 'correct' jargon.] Naturally, this just labels the problem, it doesn't constitute an effective response.
I will, however, postpone replying to this particular riposte until Part Two of this Essay (some of which has been reproduced below).
Until then it is sufficient to note that 'thought' can only take this route if we are prepared to accept without question the logical, classical, and Hegelian blunders outlined in this Essay (here and here, as well as here and here); in which case, such 'thought' deserves all the confusion it attracts to itself as a result.
Moreover, even if abstractions were arrived at in a 'more law-like way' -- as the 'mind' tries to grapple with scientific knowledge, à la Hegel --, it would still be unclear how any one mind could possibly check the 'abstractive' results of any other in order to ascertain whether or not either or both of them had arrived at the same Ideal result. Indeed, how could anyone trapped in a Hegelian world of internally processed, 'Jackson Pollock-like Concepts' decide if they even meant the same by the word "same", for goodness sake!
Figure Four: Stop Press! At Last, An Accurate Representation Of Hegel's 'System'
Has Been Discovered In The Basement Of An Art Gallery In Minsk
"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975a), p.60. Bold emphases alone added.]
This is an inner process which is in principle impossible to check, even by the one doing the processing!
Finally, it is even less use responding (as some have done) that we have to assume such things otherwise we would be faced with a yawning chasm of extreme scepticism. That is because the theory itself implies extreme scepticism, as Essay Ten Part One has shown.
(2) If, as some versions of this theory appear to imply, abstractions are produced by some sort of subtractive process -- as more and more specific features are disregarded, indeed, as Marx himself noted (re-posted below) -- in order to derive increasingly general terms, exactly who decides which parts should be subtracted first, second or third? For example, do we start by abstracting a cat's whiskers, its curiosity or its purr? Do we ignore its position or its number? And, if all of this is processed 'in the mind', who is to say that everyone does exactly the same things to exactly the same subtracted parts, in the same order or in the same manner as anyone else?
In answer to this objection, one DM-theorist tells us the following:
"Abstraction is the mental identification, singling out of some object from its connections with other objects, the separation of some attribute of an object from its other attributes, of some relation between certain objects from the objects themselves. Abstraction is a method of mental simplification, by which we consider some one aspect of the process we are studying. The scientist looks at the colourful picture which any object presents in real life through a single-colour filter and this enables him to see that object in only one, fundamentally important aspect. The picture loses many of its shades but gains in clarity. Abstraction has its limit. One cannot abstract the flame from what is burning. The sharp edge of abstraction, like the edge of a razor can be used to whittle things down until nothing is left. Abstraction can never be absolute. The existence of content shows intrinsically in every abstraction. The question of what to abstract and what to abstract from is ultimately decided by the nature of the objects under examination and the tasks confronting the investigator. Kepler, for example, was not interested in the colour of Mars or the temperature of the Sun when he sought to establish the laws of the revolution of the planets." [Spirkin (1983), p.232. Bold emphases and link added.]
But, concerning the example to which Spirkin refers, it wasn't the object (Mars) that decided "what to abstract and what to abstract from", it was Kepler who did. And, if this 'process' takes place in the 'mind' -- since it is "a method of mental simplification" -- all the problems outlined above (and below) will simply reassert themselves.
Naturally, if 'abstractions' are cobbled-together by a process of generalisation, or law-like development, then these questions will still apply, but in this case perhaps in reverse order.
(3) The actual process of mental subtraction is difficult to conceive, too. When we ignore the various parts of the objects we are supposedly performing this trick upon, is it like some sort of mental striptease? But, if we take away too much, how might we know whether the rest of this ceremony has been performed on the same 'mental' object with which we began? While we might all start with, say, a chaffinch, after its feathers, beak, claws, colour, song, wings, size and number have been stripped away, how might we distinguish the amorphous blob left behind from a similarly processed Axolotl? Or, someone's grandmother? Or, indeed, the Crab Nebula? Of course, if its number has been 'abstracted', we won't even be able to do that, will we? If we can't distinguish two such chaffinches from one such (number having been sent to the benches), we certainly won't be able to distinguish one chaffinch from two, or, indeed, one chaffinch from one Axolotl.
Of course, abstractionists are never quite this crude; they restrict themselves to rather more well-behaved "concepts", "categories" or refined "ideas", those they trust to 'reason', or better still, to 'dialectical'/'speculative' thought. But, these shadowy beings are even more obscure. Does, therefore, the 'concept' of Kermit the Frog have legs, a head and a stomach full of worms? If not, then we might wonder if this concept genuinely applies to him. If it does, we might wonder even more what the difference between him and his 'concept' is. If there is none, then Kermit would be no less Ideal. On the other hand, if there is a difference, how do we know this 'concept' belongs, or even applies, to Kermit?
Worse still, any conclusions drawn about the 'concept' of Kermit the Frog, or indeed amphibians in general, would apply to that 'concept', not to its supposed slimy external correlate. This would seem to be the case unless we are now to suppose that, just like a Black Magic Doll, whatever we do to the 'concept', we do to the real object it is said to reflect or represent. Of course, Idealists might not be able to distinguish reality from illusion, anyway, but materialists would be unwise to stumble into that dense fog alongside them -- or, indeed, adopt a 'philosophical' technique that can't in the end tell fact from fancy, or frog from fog....
And how exactly does one dissect a concept? Do concepts possess an 'objective' anatomy, which any rank amateur can slice, dice, poke or prod? Are there manuals we can consult, instruction books we can check, experts we may e-mail or engage with on Facebook?
To be sure, the Traditional Tale is deeply engrained in our culture -- you will even find psychologists who assure us that we can all construct or apprehend "abstractions" in the intimate confines of our skulls, even if they go rather quiet (or indulge in hand waving) when asked to fill in the details -- indeed, to such an extent that experience has taught me to avoid questioning this mythical 'process' in polite company or risk being treated like someone who has just confessed to murder.
[That comment is especially true of debates with Marxist dialecticians, zealous defenders of Traditional Jargon and the ruling-class thought-forms that gave them life. This is just the latest example of such 'radical' conservatism.]
Here is Marx's argument debunking this approach to 'abstraction:
"Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction -- for we have here an abstraction, and not an analysis -- presents itself as a logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop little by little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that if you leave out of account the limits of this body, you soon have nothing but a space -– that if, finally, you leave out of account the dimensions of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the logical category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction the only substance left is the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians, who in making these abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their core….
"Just as by means of abstraction we have transformed everything into a logical category, so one has only to make an abstraction of every characteristic distinctive of different movements to attain movement in its abstract condition -- purely formal movement, the purely logical formula of movement. If one finds in logical categories the substance of all things, one imagines one has found in the logical formula of movement the absolute method, which not only explains all things, but also implies the movement of things...." [Marx (1978), pp.99-100. Italic emphases in the original.]
Nevertheless, this Emperor has no clothes, abstract or concrete; indeed, there isn't even so much as a drop of blue blood in 'his' veins -- as both halves of this Essay seek to demonstrate.
Worse still: there isn't even an Emperor -- clothed or naked!
This ruling idea has been sat on its Epistemological Throne for long enough; time to wheel out a very material guillotine and do 'an Oliver'.
And the following is from Essay Three Part Two:
Yet More Headaches For Dialecticians
Traditional 'solutions' to these bogus philosophical 'problems' -- "bogus" because, in the 'West', they had originally been based on a class-motivated misconstrual of a small and unrepresentative grammatical feature of Indo-European grammar (as we saw in Part One of this Essay and in Essay Two) -- traditional 'solutions' only succeeded in creating two further 'difficulties'.11
Oddly enough, both of these 'difficulties' re-surfaced in a modified form in the DM-theory of 'abstraction', as we are about to find out.
Induction And The Social Nature Of Knowledge
In Traditional Philosophy, the first of these subsequently came to be known as the "Problem of Induction. This involves the (presumed) theoretical possibility that future events might fail conform to what would ordinarily be expected of them -- or, to put this another way, they might fail to be constrained by the conceptual straight-jacket the 'mind' had hitherto intended for them.12
This 'problem' is based on the assumed fact that generalisations about the future course of nature, when they rely solely on how certain objects, processes or events have behaved in the past, can't provide a deductively sound basis for the inference that future objects, processes, or events will always behave in the same way. Or, more generally, that the course of nature will remain the same (howsoever that is understood). So, for example, just because water has always frozen at a certain temperature, that doesn't mean that it will always freeze at that temperature (that is, even if that water has the same level of purity, and is cooled at normal atmospheric pressure throughout, etc., etc.). Or, to use David Hume's example, just because bread has always nourished those who consume it, that doesn't imply that it always will. In that case, there is no contradiction in supposing it won't.
"All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, relations of ideas, and matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra, and arithmetic, and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides, is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That three times five is equal to the half of thirty, expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. Though there never were a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would for ever retain their certainty and evidence.
"Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible, because it can never imply a contradiction, and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness, as if ever so conformable to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind." [An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Part I. Link added. Some paragraphs merged.]
This idea is brought out rather well by the following:
"But there is a price to be paid for this new methodology. About a hundred years after Bacon, Hume (1711-1776) pointed out the problem.
'The bread, which I formerly eat, nourished me; that is, a body of such sensible qualities was, at that time, endued with such secret powers: But does it follow, that other bread must also nourish me at another time, and that like sensible qualities must always be attended with like secret powers? The consequence seems nowise necessary.' [This passage is taken from Part II of Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and can be accessed here -- RL.]
"If we want to be very careful and not lump things into the same category, if types are not real, if the only real things are particular individuals, then there are no general truths about bread. We can describe the colour, shape, texture, taste and so on of this piece of bread, but if the general kind 'bread' isn't real, then whatever I learn about this piece of bread won't help me learn anything about the next piece of bread. That is the crucial usefulness of real types: if 'cat' is a real type, and not simply a nominal type, then whatever I learn about this particular cat will help me understand all cats. I can learn and know something about how to cure a problem with your cat if I have studied other cats, as long as they are identical in nature. If there is no reality to their unity as cats, then every new particular is just a new thing, and we can learn about it only by studying it; nothing else we study can possibly help us. So the existence of universals turns out to have a very profound impact on scientific methodology and epistemology." [Quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site; spelling modified to agree with UK English. Links added.]
[I hasten to add that the above doesn't represent my opinion; I am merely making a point about the traditional approach to this topic. Where Hume went wrong was to overlook the fact that if something that is assumed to be bread fails nourish us (all things being equal!), we would have good reason to question whether it was indeed bread.]
However, as we have seen, traditional 'answers' to the 'problem of Universals' only succeeded in transforming it into another 'problem' involving Abstract Particulars, which, of course, may or may not behave the same way tomorrow as they have done today. Although these Abstract Particulars might be Ideal --, 'Heavenly Creatures' of some sort, 'mental entities', or, indeed, something else -- there is no guarantee that even if they faithfully tow the line today they will do so tomorrow.
Some might argue that these are changeless abstractions (although it isn't too clear that a dialectician can consistently champion that response), but even if that were so, the words used to express that very idea aren't, and there is no guarantee that they will mean the same in the future as they have done in the past -- or even that our memory of these abstractions will even remain the same....
In short, an appeal to 'Universals' is no help at all if they, too, turn out to be particulars, which, because of that, can't guarantee their own future behaviour without another menagerie of 'Universals' to do it for them, and so on ad infinitem.
Of course, any theory that has been based on the Heraclitean Flux (as is the case with the theories dialecticians come out with) has only succeeded in sinking itself even deeper in the mire, for if there is indeed a universal flux, the future can't resemble the past! And what is worse, the word "resemble" can't even 'resemble' itself!
[The 'relative stability' argument, that is often offered in reply, has been neutralised here.]
This 'problem' partly originates in the mistaken belief that scientific theory itself delivers a special sort of truth. When that idea is abandoned (i.e., that scientific theories are the sorts of things that are capable of being either true or false), a solution to the 'problem' of induction soon suggests itself. [Notice the word "theory" here. I am not impugning scientific facts -- to state the obvious, facts aren't the same as theories. These rather controversial claims will be substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Two.]
Nevertheless, let us pose this 'problem' more acutely, pushing it a little further than is usually the case: Since both the flow of ideas 'in the mind' (even those 'in the brain' of an Über-Rationalist, like Hegel) and the sensations that accompany them are also events, 'subjective' experience can't avoid being thrown into irredeemable doubt concerning the future behaviour of even these 'mental events'.
In that case, but only if we accept this crazy family of theories, our experience of anything that has yet to occur (and this also includes our own future thoughts) might fail to 'resemble' what they had been, or seemed to have been, in the past. Even the nature of our sensations and ideas could alter from moment to moment. If we experience an idea now as an idea of a certain sort, it could be experienced or thought of as something totally different tomorrow, even though it might prove impossible to say right now what that might be -- either because we haven't the language available to do it, or because that language might itself change before we managed to utter or think anything at all.
Recall, 'abstractions' were invented to provide philosophical -- or even scientific -- stability to the deliverances of the senses. They were supposed to help provide a secure foundation for knowledge, a basis that transcended the particular and ascended to the general, and which was far superior to ephemeral, contingent, transient facts based on experience or 'appearances'. However, if we now have to appeal to 'Universals' ('Concepts', 'Categories', 'Principles', 'Ideas' or 'Rules'), all of which have been privately processed, in order to guarantee that the aforementioned changes won't happen, then, because these 'abstractions' are particulars, too, they are clearly no help at all. That is because these 'Universal' particulars (for want of a better term!) are subject to the very same doubts about their own future behaviour that already weigh against ordinary material particulars -- again, only if we insist on addressing this 'problem' on traditional lines. In that case, no particular -- abstract or concrete -- can secure a single general conclusion about the future behaviour of other objects, events and processes --, or even about themselves. There are no self-certifying ideas to be had here, given this way of conceiving this 'problem'.
Worse still: any 'solution' to this 'problem' (should one ever be found!) could itself be experienced as a non-solution the very next day -- especially if we are foolish enough buy into the Heraclitean Flux.
Naturally, expressed in this way, and in relation to the thoughts of theorists who are happy to employ the language and concepts of Traditional Philosophy, any attempt to solve the 'problem' of how the present 'binds' the future has already lost its way. In fact, as should now seem obvious, phrases like "The present" and "The future" are particulars, too (or, they 'refer' to Abstract Particulars), and as such they possess neither the brain nor the brawn to extricate any who think along these lines from this sceptical quagmire.
And, therein lies a clue to the dissolution to this family of 'problems': reject this entire way of talking as incoherent non-sense.
Not even the anti-materialist, Aristocratic Philosophers who invented it could make head or tail of it.
As we now know -- mainly because it was exposed in Part One of this Essay -- the original source of these 'difficulties' was a syntactical blunder committed by Ancient Greek metaphysicians, logicians and grammarians. In which case, the above dissolution of over two millennia of wasted effort recommends itself.
That is why Wittgensteinians have no need of a philosophical theory in their endeavour to deflate the countless balloonfulls of hot air ruling-class hacks have been inflating for over two thousand years; those theories self-deflate when (i) The source of that hot air is switched off, and (ii) A very real, very sharp, very materialist pin is introduced into the equation.
So, if any single 'mind' is capable of experiencing only a finite number of exemplars from which it has to piece-together the general ideas later attributed to it, subsequent experience could always refuse to play ball, metaphysically 'rebelling', as it were.
In that case, the future might fail to resemble the past in any meaningful sense. Not only might the Sun fail to rise (tomorrow), but cats might even refuse to walk about on mats, they could even turn into them. And Hegel might even begin to make sense.
Of course, as noted above, some philosophers have argued that these 'difficulties' could easily be neutralised if the mind was capable of gaining direct access to these 'abstract' ideas (Real Universals, General Concepts or Categories, etc.), which were supposed to be fully capable of regimenting contingent nature (or, at least, the 'impressions' the senses sent its way), so that the future was guaranteed to resemble the past -- or, at least, resemble our previous experience and knowledge of the past.
However, in order to control these potentially 'rebellious' ideas (and, indeed, our ideas of them), something a little more robust was called for than Locke's Social Contract, or Hume's feeble habitus. Ancient Greek notions concerning an ordered Cosmos -- a limited Whole, a doctrine concocted at a time when Idealist theories like this seemed to make some sort of sense to the ruling-class hacks who dreamt them up --, didn't translate at all well into the socially-fragmented, bourgeois world of the 18th century. Indeed, those ancient dogmas were themselves threatened on a daily basis by these seemingly unruly material particulars.
As noted above, David Hume attempted to solve this 'problem' by an appeal to the habits of the mind (hence my use of the word "habitus"), which supposedly induced in us certain expectations about the future based on past experience. Clearly, this rather vague notion is susceptible to the rather disconcerting challenges set out above, as Hume himself acknowledged. This is quite apart from the fact that once it is allowed that any series of events in this universe is subject to such a sceptical onslaught, it is difficult to see how these 'habits of the mind' can themselves emerge unscathed.
The abandonment of the 'logical' or necessary connection between a Universal and its Particulars, which took place in the High Middle Ages (with the rise of Nominalism -- but the cracks were already forming in the Ancient World in the work of post-Aristotelian theorists, the Nominalists merely prised these fissures wide enough for all to see), introduced radical contingency into Traditional Theories of nature and society. This development wasn't, of course, unconnected with the decline of the power of the Papacy as Feudalism began to unravel, giving way to early forms of the market economy.
Rationalist Philosophers (like Spinoza and Leibniz) attempted to repair the damage these 'revisions' had inflicted on the 'Rational Order'. To that end, they devised a series 'necessitarian' theories of their own that attempted to provide a logical connection between a given substance and its 'accidents', its properties. Unfortunately, these theories were themselves predicated on the same old "ruling ideas" -- i.e., on (i) The unsupported dogma that 'reality' is 'rational', and (ii) The doctrine that fundamental 'truths' about 'reality' could be derived from thought alone.
[On the general background to this, see, for example, Copleston (2003a, 2003b, 2003c).]
Here is how I have made a similar point in Essay Eleven Part Two -- in a consideration of certain aspects of Christian Fundamentalism and 'Intelligent Design', but it seems relevant to one of the main themes of this Essay:
There is an excellent summary of the two main avenues theists have taken in their endeavour to conceive of the relationship between 'God' and 'His' creation, in Osler (2004), pp.15-35. [Not unexpectedly, these neatly mirror the tensions that plague the dialectical account of nature and society, too.]
Here follows a summary of the relevant parts of Osler's thesis (with a few additional comments of my own thrown in for good measure):
Traditionally, there were two ways of conceiving 'God's' relation to material reality: (a) 'He' is related to it by necessity, as an expression of 'His' nature, and (b) 'He' is related to it contingently -- as an expression of 'His' 'free will'.
If (a) were the case, there would be a logical connection between the properties of created beings and their 'essence' -- i.e., the logical core of each being, which is either an expression of its unique nature, or of the 'kind' to which it belongs. In turn, this would be a consequence of the logical or conceptual links that exist between 'creation' and 'God's Nature'. If that weren't the case, it would introduce radical contingency into creation, undermining 'God's Nature' and/or 'His' control of 'Creation'. As a result language and logic must constitute reality (why that is so is outlined here).
[Also worth pointing out is the fact that super-truths like this -- about fundamental aspects of 'reality' -- may only be accessed by means of speculative thought.]
This means that all that exists is either (i) An expression of the logical properties inherent in 'God', or (ii) An emanation from 'God'. That is, material reality must be logically 'emergent' from, and hence connected with, the 'Deity'. So, the universe 'issues' forth from 'His' nature 'eternally' and a-temporally, outside of time, since 'He' exists outside of time. Everything must therefore be inter-linked by 'internal', or 'necessary', relations, all of which were derived from, and constituted by, 'concepts' implicit in 'God', which are also mirrored in fundamental aspects of creation. This idea is prominent in Plotinus and subsequent Neo-Platonists, like Hegel.
Given this approach, the vast majority of 'ordinary' human beings can't access, nor can they comprehend, this 'rational' view of 'reality'; their lack of knowledge, education -- or even 'divine illumination' -- means that, at best, they misperceive these 'logical properties' as contingent qualities. Hence, for them, appearances fail to match underlying "essence". Naturally, this implies that "commonsense" and ordinary language are 'fundamentally unreliable'.
Now, where have we heard all that before?
(b) On the other hand, if 'God' acted freely when 'He' created the world -- that is, if 'He' wasn't acting under any form of 'compulsion', logical or conceptual -- i.e., because of the logical properties inherent in 'His' nature -- then there would be no logical or necessary connection between 'The Creator' and 'His Creation' -- nor, indeed, between each created being. Every object and process in reality will therefore be genuinely contingent, and appearances will no longer be 'deceptive', since appearances can't mask the hidden, esoteric 'essences' mentioned above, for there are none. If so, there are no synthetic a priori truths (as these later came to be called), ascertainable by thought alone. The only path to knowledge was through observation, experiment, and careful study of the 'Book of Nature'. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the foundations of modern science were laid in the Middle Ages largely by theorists who adopted this view of 'God' -- for example, Jean Buridan.
[Copleston (2003c), pp.153-67, Crombie (1970, 1979), Grant (1996), Hannam (2009), Lindberg (2007).]
In post-Renaissance thought, the 'necessitarian' tradition surfaced in the work of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz and Hegel; the 'voluntarist' tradition reappeared in an attenuated form in the work of Newton, the Empiricists, and the so-called "mechanists", who stressed the connection between 'God's' free will and contingency in nature, alongside the primacy of empirical over a priori knowledge and the superiority of observation and experiment over speculation and abstract theory.
[To be sure, the above categories are rather crude; for example, Descartes was a mechanist, but his theory put him on the same side of the fence as Spinoza and Leibniz, whereas Gassendi was also a mechanist, but his ideas aligned him with the voluntarists. On this, see Copleston (2003d).]
Now, when, for example, Fundamentalist Christians look at nature and see design everywhere, they also claim to see 'irreducible complexity' -- the handiwork of 'God' -- and they either put this down to 'His' free creation, or they see it as an expression of logical properties imposed on nature by the Logos (depending, of course, on how they view the nature of 'The Creator' and 'His' relation to the world).
Christian mechanists saw design in nature, too, but their theories became increasingly deistic, and later atheistic. The introduction of a contingent link between 'God' and nature severed the logical connection that earlier theorists had postulated, making "the God hypothesis" seem increasingly redundant.
[On this, see Lovejoy (1964). There is also an excellent account of these developments in Redwood (1976). Also see Dillenberger (1988). A classic expression of these developments can be found in the debate between Leibniz and Clarke. Cf., Alexander (1956), and Vailati (1997).]
Much of this controversy had been provoked, however, by the work of the Medieval Nominalists, whose theories also sundered the logical link between a substance and its properties, as part of a reaction to the tradition begun by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, with his separation of 'essence' and 'existence' in created beings), Averroës (Ibn Rushd), and the so-called "Latin Averroists" (e.g., Siger of Brabant). The latter argued strongly in favour of Aristotle's doctrine of natural necessity, undermining 'God's' free will -- at least, so far as the Roman Catholic Church saw things. This reaction was also prompted by philosophical worries about the nature of transubstantiation and the relation between the 'essence' of the emblems (the bread and the wine in the Eucharist) and their 'accidents' (their apparent properties).
The aforementioned reaction was occasioned by the 'Condemnations of 1277', whereby the Bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, condemned 219 propositions, among which was the Averroist interpretation of Aristotle -- particularly the idea that the created order was governed by logical necessity. The most important response to these condemnations appeared in the work of the Nominalist, William of Ockham, who, as a result, stressed the free will of 'God' and thus the contingent nature of the world. For Ockham, this meant that there were no 'essences' in nature, nor were the apparent properties of bodies (their 'accidents') logically connected with their 'nominal essence' (as this later came to be called by Locke).
[On this, see Osler (2004), Copleston (2003b), pp.136-55, 190-95, 437-41, Copleston (2003c), pp.43-167, and Copleston (2003e), pp.79-107.]
In the 18th century, a resurgence of the 'necessitarian' tradition motivated, among other things, the "re-enchantment" of nature and society in the theories concocted by the Natürphilosophers and Hegel -- and later, those invented by Marxist Dialecticians.
[On this, see Harrington (1996), Lenoir (1982), Richards (2002), and Essay Fourteen Parts One and Two, when they are published. More details can be found in Foster (1934), Hooykaas (1973), Lindberg (2007), and Osler (2004). For the Hermetic background to all this, see Magee (2008). Cf., also Essay Twelve (summary here). At a future date, I will publish an essay on Leibniz I wrote as an undergraduate, which anticipated some of the ideas in Osler's book, for example.]
So, where Christians see design, DM-fans see "internal relations". Same problematic, same source -- same bogus 'solution' to this set of pseudo-problems.12a
In such inhospitable surroundings, not only must 'Concepts' and 'Abstractions' that attempt to regiment impressions and ideas into the right sortal groups be robust enough to so organise the contents of the 'mind' behind the backs, as it were, of their producers (i.e., Traditional Theorists), they must exist prior to, and independent of, experience -- or, suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune themselves.
Initially, for "crude materialists", at least, it wasn't easy to account either for the source, or for the effectiveness, of these 'sergeant-major'-like concepts -- i.e., these 'mental constructs' ('frameworks', 'concepts' and 'categories', etc.), which permit of no exceptions, past, present or future. The theoretical rescue for empiricists and materialists (if such it may be called) came from an unexpected source: German Idealism. More specifically, and even more revealingly, this 'rescue' turned out to be an impossibly convoluted, obscure version of Ancient Greek Platonism and Hermeticism.
The Seventh Cavalry had arrived in the nick of time, but it was, alas, blowing a very indistinct note -- possibly none at all.
Esoteric Flannel replacing Errol Flynn.
The 'Epistemologically Imperialist Utopia' concocted by these Teutonic Idealists required the invention of Super-Duper 'Concepts', Industrial Strength 'Categories', Carbon Fibre 'Principles', and Borazonic Ideas, packing enough metaphysical clout to control the deliverances of the senses with an iron hand. These days such heavy-duty principles are further buttressed by impressive sounding phrases -- such as, "natural necessity", "conceptual-", or "ontological-necessity". Terms like this are clearly needed, otherwise the semi-house-trained impressions (or, for Kant, "intuitions") the senses deliver up might continue to revolt and set up their own Anarchist Collective -- where fires might actually freeze things instead of burning them, fish might break out in song, and Dialectical Marxism might even become a ringing success.13
[From Note 13: Anyone who objects to the anthropomorphic terminology used at this point should perhaps recall that it is only being employed in order to show how completely unbelievable Traditional Theories like this are when its language and concepts are pushed to the limit, and thus applied more consistently -- its class roots also exposed -- than is usually the case. Anyone who still objects should rather take issue with those who concocted these theories not those who seek to lampoon them.]
Furthermore, these 'Concepts', 'Categories' and 'Principles' would have to be logical -- or, indeed, 'dialectical' --, if they are capable of exercising rigid control over the future course of events -- or even the future deliverances of the senses --, ensuring that every single impression and idea troops into the correct metaphysical category, collected under the right general term, never even thinking to step out-of-line; not once.
As noted earlier, bourgeois ideas were now clapped in chains; the 'free market' 'revolution in the head' was over. The Rationalist and Idealist takeover turned out to be a veritable 'Mental Thermidor'.14
One awkward question remained: How could something even as powerful as a 'Logical Principle' guarantee that future contingencies will always do as they have been told? Surely these 'rational principles' are particulars themselves -- especially if they reside in individual, isolated bourgeois skulls?
The point here is rather simple: logical principles per se can't create generality; generality emerges from the application of a rule, which neither words nor 'Concepts' -- nor even 'Principles' -- can quite manage on their lonesome. Once again, it is human beings (as part of a collective, but not as individuals) who determine what constitutes the correct application of a rule, since, as has been pointed out many times, words, 'Concepts', and 'Principles' have neither the wit, intelligence, nor social structure sufficient to the task.
That was, indeed, the point of emphasising the atomisation that gave birth to the bourgeois, 'logical principles' mentioned earlier in this Essay. The fragmentation introduced into epistemology (in both its Rationalist and Empiricist wings) meant that in the heads of 'socially isolated' bourgeois thinkers -- this isn't my judgement on them, it follows from their own epistemologies -- these 'Concepts' can only operate as the Proper Names of Abstract Particulars, or, indeed, as particulars themselves, destroying generality and undermining the unity of the proposition as a result. So, for example, 'the concept of time' (in Kant) and that of 'Being' (in Hegel) are no less Abstract Particulars than anything Aristotle had ever invented.14a0
Clearly, 'Logical Principles' like this could only regiment unruly ideas and rebellious particulars if they somehow controlled their future behaviour, and were thus intelligent agents themselves. Truth be told, it was almost as if these 'Logical Principles' actually existed in 'external reality', too, and were those very Ideas themselves in 'self-development', or were the rules which led the deliverances of experience by the hand. In Hegel, this doctrine clearly sundered the distinction between Mind and Matter -- which is largely why Engels thought he could argue that matter is just an abstraction, indeed, using an echo of the very same argument (and even the same example!) Hegel had employed:
"It is the old story. First of all one makes sensuous things into abstractions and then one wants to know them through the senses, to see time and smell space. The empiricist becomes so steeped in the habit of empirical experience, that he believes that he is still in the field of sensuous experience when he is operating with abstractions.... The two forms of existence of matter are naturally nothing without matter, empty concepts, abstractions which exist only in our minds. But, of course, we are supposed not to know what matter and motion are! Of course not, for matter as such and motion as such have not yet been seen or otherwise experienced by anyone, only the various existing material things and forms of motions. Matter is nothing but the totality of material things from which this concept is abstracted and motion as such nothing but the totality of all sensuously perceptible forms of motion; words like matter and motion are nothing but abbreviations in which we comprehend many different sensuous perceptible things according to their common properties. Hence matter and motion can be known in no other way than by investigation of the separate material things and forms of motion, and by knowing these, we also pro tanto know matter and motion as such.... This is just like the difficulty mentioned by Hegel; we can eat cherries and plums, but not fruit, because no one has so far eaten fruit as such." [Engels (1954), pp.235-36. Bold emphasis alone added.]
"N.B. Matter as such is a pure creation of thought and an abstraction. We leave out of account the qualitative differences of things in lumping them together as corporeally existing things under the concept matter. Hence matter as such, as distinct from definite existing pieces of matter, is not anything sensuously existing." [Ibid., p.255. Bold emphasis added.]
"When the universal is made a mere form and co-ordinated with the particular, as if it were on the same level, it sinks into the particular itself. Even common sense in everyday matters is above the absurdity of setting a universal beside the particulars. Would anyone, who wished for fruit, reject cherries, pears, and grapes, on the ground that they were cherries, pears or grapes, and not fruit?" [Hegel (1975), p.19, §13, quoted from here. Italic emphases in the original; bold added.]
In fact, the control of future contingencies now became a question concerning the self-discipline of a veritable army self-developing 'Concepts'. In fact, these 'Concepts' controlled the future because they controlled themselves, and with a bright and shiny 'new logic' -- a dialectical logic -- to lead the way; a 'logic' that was itself based on a seriously distorted metaphor about how arguments themselves edge toward their conclusions. This new 'logic' laid down the law, and everything in nature and society -- Mind and Matter -- could do little other than bend the knee to its Contradictory Will.
The World Soul in Plato thus had new life breathed into it and ran the entire show; the future was now under the effective control of this 'logic' as part of the supernatural self-expression of an 'animating spirit'. In this way, the social application of linguistic rules was inverted and became the inner expression of 'Self-Developing Mind'.
It is precisely here that the fetishisation of language -- referred to in Part One -- inserted itself into Dialectical Philosophy, and hence into Marxism.
As we saw, Ancient and Medieval Logic had in effect destroyed the expression of generality in and by language. In its place, an ersatz 'generality' was taken off the bench and sent into play -- but now as an integral aspect of the operation of a Cosmic 'Mind' beavering away inside Hegel's head. However, even when Hegel's fantasy is "put back on its feet", the logical blunders on which it was based remained in place. Indeed, they were fetishised all the more, being transmogrified into the animating spirit of what would otherwise have been inert matter. This now breathed life into the theories concocted by the 'crude materialists' -- for without this animating spirit, these 'contradictions', their systems would be left like a 'clock without a spring'. Hegel's 'Self-Developing Mind', now "back on its feet", re-animated matter -- nature and society were summarily re-enchanted. [Harrington (1996).]14a1
Paradoxically, in this topsy-turvy 'dialectical universe', we have also been told that the working out of the 'Iron Laws of the Cosmos' is wholly compatible with human freedom! These Self-Developing Ideas were, of course, free because they were a law unto themselves. Indeed, they even seemed to control 'God', who, it turns out, had all along been led by the nose by these 'self-developing' concepts, too.
The 'good news' for humanity is that the more they subject themselves to these Laws, the 'freer' they become. As the Gospel says, "The truth shall make you free", and the 'law' of Christ brings 'true' freedom.
Hence, the more human beings are in chains the less they are in chains!
You just couldn't make this stuff up!
But, hey, that's Diabolical Logic for you...
Rousseau thought he could justify social control in this way, too, but all he had in mind was an 'Ideal Thermidor'. In comparison, Hegel discovered that his own Ideas controlled him, but only if he projected the protocols of 'social reality' internally, and fetishised these ideas inside his head. Hence, for him, what had once been the product of the social relations between human beings (language, argument and dialectic) not only upended itself and manipulated his thought processes, it ran the entire universe!
This is indeed the philosophical equivalent of the deranged who claim they are 'God Incarnate'; these crazy ideas took over the asylum. Instead of the psychologically-challenged contradicting themselves, Hegel's universe did it for them!
Feuerbach plainly got things completely the wrong way round; Hegel's 'God' is the projection of humanity inwards, not outwards. For DM-fans, ideas supposedly 'reflect' the world --, but they do this only if they allow Hegel's mystical and fractured 'logic' to control their thoughts, too.14a2
Indeed, as Max Eastman noted:
"Hegelism is like a mental disease; you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]
[Anyone who objects to my quoting Max Eastman should check this out first, and then perhaps think again.]
Which, of course, helps explain the semi-religious fervour with which the Sacred Dialectic is defended by all those whose brains it has colonised. [On that, see here and here.]
However, Hegel's Idealist 'solution' only succeeded in creating another problem: If autocratic 'Principles' like these are required so that order can be imposed on unruly reality -- as well as our ideas about it -- and if knowledge is still dependent on the vicissitudes of human cognition, then these 'Principles' only succeed in undermining themselves. Indeed, if the cosmic order can only be comprehended by being put in some sort of order inside each bourgeois skull by anthropomorphising reality and our ideas about it, then that anthropomorphisation can't fail to self-destruct. That is because, if ordinary human beings can't be relied on (i.e., if the vernacular is untrustworthy, and 'commonsense' is unreliable --, which ruling-class slurs and suspicions had motivated this suicidal 'theory' in the first place, thus assisting in the destruction of generality), then these 'inner human beings' (these anthropomorphised, Self-Developing Ideas), and their shadowy 'internal relations', must be equally, if not more, suspect.
If the ideas of everyday, material human beings, with their reliance of 'appearances', can't be trusted, then what confidence can we have in the reliability of these inner, ghostly spectres, these shadow human beings?
This worry arises not just because it is difficult enough to account for the social nature of knowledge in the individual case, but because this 'problem' becomes completely intractable when it is generalised to take into account the countless minds supposedly able to perform the same trick and arrive at the same conclusions from their limited experience and finite stock of ideas. [As we saw earlier.]
Given this approach, humanity-wide conceptual coordination would be completely miraculous. Indeed, it would be no less miraculous for this to happen across the inhabitants of a small village, let alone a large city.
In fact, it is far more likely that each and every member of the much smaller, self-selected group of 'professional abstractors' -- or, for that matter, every single Hegel scholar -- is dancing to a different dialectical tune echoed in each socially-atomised head under the direction of their very own quintessentially petty-bourgeois brains.
[Apologies for these and the many other mixed metaphors in this Essay!]
The problem we met earlier (concerning the social and epistemological fragmentation introduced by the market economy) re-surfaces precisely here; the bourgeois psyche disunited will, it seems, never be re-united.
So, in the realm of ideas alone, it now proves impossible to undo the effects the bourgeois revolution introduced into epistemology. If every single human being has to perform these 'feats of abstraction' in their socially-atomised heads, then there can be no such thing as socialised knowledge -- or, more pointedly, no such thing as knowledge per se.
This helps account for the many and varied, and failed, theories of knowledge humanity has had inflicted on it over the last four hundred years -- to add to those concocted during the previous two thousand.
Nevertheless, by these means the Individual was allowed, if not invited, to strike back, initially disguised as the Dialectical Guru, Hegel Himself. Only he (and perhaps his dialectical-descendants) were 'licensed' to interpret the self-development of thought, and thus the course of history -- for the benefit of the rest of benighted humanity, of course. Dialectical Philosophers were now Dialectical Prophets, a resolutely substitutionist ideology their Gospel.14a
Given this approach to knowledge, no matter how robust the metaphysical, neurological or psychological coercion involved (operating inside each dialectical skull), the coordination of knowledge across a whole population would be, as we have seen, quite miraculous --, unless, of course, it had been imposed on all those involved by the Iron Will of the Glorious Leader, the Great Teacher, or simply, 'The Party'. The Invisible Hand was now replaced by the Mailed Fist of the Stalinised State -- or, indeed, the Guardians of Orthodoxy in the case of (nominally) non-Stalinist parties. In the 'bourgeois market' of internally-processed ideas, Adam Smith's Invisible Hand couldn't leave even so much as a smudged fingerprint. Hence, a very visible mailed fist belonging to the Dialectical Magus -- which sometimes took the shape of Gerry Healy; elsewhere that of Mao, Bob Avakian, Marlene Dixon, Abimael Guzmán or even the Great Teacher Himself, Stalin -- was necessary in order to guarantee good epistemological order.
And Marxist 'intellectuals' who can't control orthodoxy merely grow angry and abusive when all this is pointed out to them. Each is just a 'diminutive Stalinist in the kingdom of ideas', only without any power. Hence, the tantrums.
[Exactly how 'Epistemological Stalinism' like this has worked its way into practically every nook and cranny of Dialectical Marxism, and thus into virtually every party and tendency on the far left, is explored in Essay Nine Part Two.]
However, not only would each lone abstractor have absolutely no access to the ideas tucked away in the heads of other lone abstractors, they would have no way of checking whether or not they were even edging their own abstractions in the 'right', or even the 'same', direction. [And, it is no good appealing to 'practice', since that, too, has been overshadowed by the dead hand of abstractionism.]
Despite this, the fact that inter-subjective agreement actually takes place (and countless times, everyday) suggests that this fanciful neo-bourgeois picture is as wide-of-the-mark as anything could be. Indeed, when the day-to-day requirements imposed by the material world on every socially-active agent are factored in, this myth falls apart even faster than a WMD dossier.
The reasons for this aren't hard to find (if we assume for the purposes of argument that, per impossible, abstractionism is true): not only is it is highly unlikely that each mind would form the same general idea of the same objects and processes from its limited stock of data -- which is problematic enough in itself in view of the fact that no two people share exactly the same experience or draw the same conclusions from it -- the word "same" attracts identical difficulties (irony intended). Moreover, in its endeavour to explain generality, this traditional approach to knowledge involves an appeal to a concept that looks suspiciously general itself. If no two minds can check the supposed 'similarities' in or between anyone else's ideas -- howsoever dialectically orthodox those abstractors or these concepts happen to be -- then there is no way that a social process, if it is based on abstraction, could even make it onto the starting grid, let alone begin the race. Questions would naturally arise as to whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general -- or even dialectical) had actually taken root in such socially-isolated dialectical minds. And these worries would persist until it had been established whether or not each abstractor had the 'same' idea about the word "same", let alone anything else.14b
And, how on earth might that be ascertained for goodness sake?
Worse still: given the 'dialectical' view of identity, this problem can't even be stated, let alone solved. The peremptory rejection of the LOI now returns to haunt DM-epistemology; by confusing a logical issue with an epistemological red-herring, the quest for what is supposed to be a 'superior form of dialectical knowledge' has now been trapped in a solipsistic dungeon.
[LOI = Law of Identity.]
Once more, that is because it has yet to be explained how any two dialectically-distracted minds could frame the same general, or even particular, idea of anything at all -- even before the dialectical juggernaut begins to roll --, or how a check might be made whether or not either of these intrepid abstractors had accomplished this miraculous feat correctly. And, that isn't so much because none of us has access to the mind of any other abstractor -- which, on this view, we haven't -- it is because it has yet to be established whether anyone even has the same idea of the word "correct"!15
Once more: how on earth might that be checked for goodness sake?
Again, it is no use looking to practice to rescue this failing theory, for it has yet to be established whether or not any two abstractors have the same abstract (or 'concrete') idea even of practice!
Once more, how on earth might that...?
[The reader is invited to finish that question for herself.]
Furthermore, it is equally unclear how even this relatively minor worry (about the generality of what are supposed to be general ideas) may be communicated between these lone abstractors without employing the very same notion that originally required explanation -- i.e., generality itself --, along with the application of the LOI as a rule of language.16
More problematic still (for those who at least gesture toward accepting even a minimally social view of language and knowledge) is the following question: How might it be ascertained whether or not the same ideas about anything (be they abstract, concrete, general, or particular) have been inherited correctly from former generations of intrepid abstractors? Without access to a time machine, mind probes -- and, once more, a prior grasp of the very things they have allegedly bequeathed to us (i.e., general ideas!) -- no one would be in any position to determine the accuracy of a single 'concept' or 'dialectical principle' supposedly belonging to this 'common inheritance'.
But, given DM-epistemology, no start could be made at even attempting to build such knowledge; not only would this 'intentional edifice' have no foundation -- since the basis on which we might build on inherited knowledge has already been shown to be no firmer than quicksand --, no two prospective labourers would have the same plot of land to labour upon, the same plan to guide them, the same materials to work with -- nor even the remotest idea about what would conceivably count as the 'same brick'!
[Except, of course, by sheer coincidence; but even then aspiring abstractors would still be unable to determine the nature of any such similarities -- plainly, since they would need general ideas in order to do it -- which they haven't yet constructed --, and, even worse, the word "same" is itself subject to the same difficulties (no pun intended), as noted above.]
Again, but to change the image, that is because dialecticians unwisely threw their hand in before the cards had even been dealt, for they are the ones who deny that anything could be exactly the same as anything else -- except in the most tenuous and abstract of terms. If they insist on taking pot shots at the LOI, it is little wonder DM-fans keep shooting themselves in the non-dialectical foot.
[Apologies once more for all these mixed metaphors!]
This means that, based on the strictures dialecticians have themselves placed on any concrete application of the LOI, no two people could ever have the same general -- or even particular -- idea of anything. Nor could they have the same idea about approximate identity (so that they could conclude that their ideas only really roughly coincided with those of anyone else). If the dread word "same" can't be the same in any two minds, the phrase "approximately the same" stands no chance.
Worse still, no dialectician would or could have the same (or approximately the same) general (or particular) idea as he or she previously had about anything -- last week, yesterday, or even a few seconds ago --, so that they could say of their own opinions that they were even approximately stable from moment to moment.
In that case, of course, the 'process of abstraction' can't even get off the ground!
It should hardly need pointing out that abstraction can't make a start where there is nothing common to abstract, or no shared concepts to work with from moment to moment -- or, of course, where no 'law of cognition' remains the same from second to second, or which is shared across an entire population of socially-isolated dialectical skulls.16a
An appeal to memory here would be to no avail, either. That is because it has yet to be established that anyone has the same memory of the meaning of the word "memory" from moment to moment.
Once again: how on earth might that be ascertained for goodness sake?
[I hasten to add once more that the above sceptical remarks do not represent my view! They are being aired in this Essay to expose the yawning chasm of scepticism implied by Traditional and DM-Epistemology.]
In this way, the theory of abstraction has not only destroyed each and every dialectical proposition (that result was established in Part One of this Essay), the entire project has only succeeded in strangling itself even before birth as its adherents appropriated the regressive bourgeois individualist idea that we all abstract in the privacy of our own heads; just as it succeeds in undermining the thought processes of anyone foolish enough to give it so much as the time of day.
Of course, that is why an earlier claim was advanced (i.e., again, at the end of Part One) that the hypothetical activities of our heroic ancestral abstractors can't have taken place, since no sense can be made of the possibility that they could.
Indeed, as we have just seen....
Reality: Abstract, Concrete -- Or Both?
The second difficulty (mentioned earlier) isn't unconnected with the first, but has somewhat different implications. As we have just seen, traditional solutions to the 'problem' of Universals only appeared to succeed because they either (i) Anthropomorphised the brain along with its ideas, or they (ii) Fetishised language, so that the product of social interaction (language) was reified, with many of its words transformed into the relation between objects or processes, or they became those objects and processes themselves. [We saw this throughout Part One in connection with Traditional Theorists' and dialecticians' confusion of talk about talk with talk about the world -- for example here and here.]
As we have also seen, in order to explain the operation of 'the mind', Empiricists found that they had to postulate the existence of what were in effect 'intelligent ideas', which were either spontaneously gregarious or were somehow capable of obeying externally imposed rules intelligently as they went about their lawful business.
On the other hand, Rationalists held that contingent events in 'reality' couldn't account for our -- or, in fact, their -- ideas about such events. As they saw things, the reverse was the case: it was the nature, or the development, of our ideas or our minds that explained the 'outer' world. Naturally, this inverted epistemology, and ended up dictating to nature what it must be like, implying that reality was fundamentally Ideal.
All this is reasonably obvious.
The next bit isn't quite so much.
On the basis of the entire gamut of rationalist world-views, theorists constructed (or 'discovered') what they took to be nature's "laws", but what they didn't do was conclude that their theories were true merely because nature and society were law-governed. On the contrary, many held that the connection was much tighter than this. They imagined they were able to read these 'laws' into nature and society simply because the mind was structured in a specific way. In addition, the 'possibility of experience' meant that the world also had to be structured in a certain way, or we couldn't experience, and hence know anything at all.18 This placed human cognition right at the centre of the meaning and cognitive universe -- and what was intended to be a 'Copernican Revolution' in Philosophy turned out to be its exact opposite: its Ptolemaic realignment. 'The human mind' now made the world. In fact, for some hard core thinkers, 'the mind' constituted the world.
[From Note 18: These ideas are up front in Kant, although some had been less clearly expressed in the work of earlier thinkers. However, since Hegel (by-and-large) adopted, and then adapted, Kant's approach to suit his own ends, the comments in the main body of this Essay only need to be true of post-Kantian Idealism in general for it to apply to dialectics (upside down or 'the right way up').
[Of course, these days, evolution (as opposed to our social development) is considered by many to have been capable of shaping the 'mind' in this and many other respects; I have devoted much of Essay Thirteen Part Three to showing how misguided that idea is, too. Readers are directed there for more details.]
[On the pernicious nature of Idealism, and why many opt for it (some of which motivating factors apply equally well to Marxist dialecticians), see David Stove's articles: 'Idealism: A Victorian Horror-Story, Parts I and II', in Stove (1991), pp.83-177. However, in relation to Stove's work, readers should take account of the caveats I have posted here.]
If, as tradition would have it, the world is a 'reflection' of 'God's Mind' -- and the human mind 'at its best' is, in turn, a pale reflection of 'His' 'Mind' --, then the 'inter-reflection' between 'mind' and world, world and 'mind', would guarantee that philosophical thought left to its own devices was capable of penetrating beneath the surface of 'appearances', right to the heart of 'Being' itself, uncovering its hidden 'essences'. General laws thus seemed to be either the result of these 'self-directed' concepts, which accurately captured or mirrored nature's inner secrets, or they were their constitutive cause.
As Hermetic Philosophers had imagined, the Microcosm of the human mind reflected the Macrocosm of 'God's' creation because both were Mind. Union with 'God' was of a piece with union with Nature (or rather with its 'Essence'), which helps explain the origin of what turned out to be the main problematic of German Idealism: 'Subject-Object Identity'. In Hegel's system, the union between the 'Knower and the Known' was guaranteed by the application of Divine -- aka Dialectical -- Logic; the mystical 'Rosicrucian wedding' had finally been consummated.18a
Empiricist theories arrived at analogous conclusions, but from a different direction.19
Either way -- as Hegel himself pointed out -- every branch of Traditional Philosophy sooner or later found its way back to the Ideal home from whence it came:
"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; § 316. Bold added.]20
Nevertheless, the serious problems this approach to knowledge brought in its train re-surfaced in 'dialectics', only now in a much more acute form. Dialecticians claim that their system somehow reverses the above process of cognition in order to neutralise its obvious Idealist implications (albeit after its "mystical shell" has been removed, leaving only its "rational kernel"). So, they declare that their theory has been rotated through 180º to stand proudly on its own two, very materialist legs -- hardly noticing that the Ideal backside is now where the materialist head used to be, and vice versa.
At least that helps explain all that hot air.
However, psycho-logical trickery like this wasn't designed to operate in reverse -- which is why the Idealist forward gear always manages to reassert itself.
As Essay Two has shown, dialecticians proceed as if it were quite natural -- hardly worth mentioning, in fact -- to extrapolate from thoughts, words or concepts to necessary and universal truths about 'reality' or society. Not only do DM-theorists proceed as if they think their laws and a priori theses are applicable to all of reality for all of time, or all of capitalism until its demise, they have to talk this way.
And we can now see why that is so: it comes with the territory. The Dialectical Macrocosm and the Dialectical Microcosm are two sides of the same class-compromised coin. That is because this entire world-view was inherited (in a modified form) from Aristocratic Greek thinkers who designed it, and who fully intended that it should work this way. These "ruling-ideas" rule 'radical' heads because, to fans-of-the-dialectic, they seem so natural and quintessentially 'philosophical'. If dialecticians didn't think and talk this way, they wouldn't have a 'genuine philosophy' of their own, but especially not one that Lenin claimed was the logical culmination of the very best elements of 'western thought':
"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism. The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added. Paragraphs merged.]20a
This is, of course, the intellectual equivalent of wanting to 'hang with the cool kids'. [It is also one of the main reasons HCDs reject my Essays.]
If abstractions provide the glue that supposedly binds knowledge together (or which enable the formation of knowledge, as Lenin argued), what else could these creatures of Greek Thought imply about Nature except that it is just one Big Idea?
Or, more accurately: what else could this doctrine imply but that Hegel Junior ('dialectics') looks just like his dad?
"Logical concepts are subjective so long as they remain 'abstract,' in their abstract form, but at the same time they express the Thing-in-themselves. Nature is both concrete and abstract, both phenomenon and essence, both moment and relation." [Lenin (1961), p.208. Italic emphases in the original.]
"Thought proceeding from the concrete to the abstract -- provided it is correct (NB)… -- does not get away from the truth but comes closer to it. The abstraction of matter, the law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely." [Ibid., p.171. Italic emphases in the original.]
Perhaps we can now understand why Lenin argued this way: 'dialectics' is the Ideal offspring of an equally Ideal Family. And this family tree stretches right back into the mists of ruling-class time.
Of course, dialecticians are among the first to tell us that these abstractions have been derived from the world via some sort of 'law of cognition', and have been "tested in practice", but the above considerations cast serious doubt on the validity of those claims.
These infant doubts will mature quite alarmingly as the Essays posted at this site unfold.
Collective Error Over General Terms
Nominalism aside, traditional accounts of the origin of abstract general Ideas all shared the belief that 'the mind' was somehow capable of ascending from particulars (given in experience) to the general (not so given) -- or, perhaps sometimes the other way round (depending on which myth-maker was telling this tale), unifying particulars under an 'objective law', or some form of 'apprehension' --, as it progressively disregards their unique ("accidental", "inessential") properties, or as it searched for wider connections in order to uncover the hidden 'essences' that supposedly underpinned 'appearances'.21
That alone should have made erstwhile materialists pause for more than just a moment; what on earth could be so materialist about a theory that has to withdraw from the material into the Ideal in such an irresponsible and profligate manner?
The pay-off, so we have been led to believe, is the greater explanatory power (etc.) this approach supposedly brings in its train. But, if that is gained at the expense of populating the world with nearly as many abstractions as there are material bodies, and which turn out to be more real than material bodies (which is part of the reason why dialecticians regard matter itself as an abstraction!) -- since these 'abstractions' are required to explain the nature and behaviour of objects and process in this world, not the other way round -- one wonders what sort of victory has been won over Idealism.
[A 'victory' of the same order, perhaps, as that of the Church over 'sin', 'crime' and warfare? Or, that of Social Democracy over Capitalism? These questions become all the more ironic when it is recalled that 'dialectics' is incapable of explaining anything at all (as we will see as these Essays unfold), a disconcerting outcome only further compounded by the additional fact that Dialectical Marxism has been an abject, long-term failure.]
In fact, the reverse appears to be far more likely. Indeed, this entire approach is plainly based on the ancient belief that material reality, nature and society are insufficient of themselves, that they aren't fully real, but are dependent on something else that isn't material, and they require the background operation of Ideal principles to make them work.
Even for dialectical materialists, matter (would you believe!) is far too crude and lifeless to do anything on its own (again, Engels even called matter an "abstraction"!) -- even if this is all that nature has to offer. Apparently, it needs a 'Logic' to make it tick. Well, we all know which religion is based on a belief in the Logos.
[Spoiler: the vast majority.]
And that explains why Lenin could declare that he preferred intelligent Idealism to "crude materialism".22
By nailing their colours to this ruling-class flagpole, dialecticians have unfortunately placed themselves on the side of the 'Gods'.
Diodorus Siculus is, I think, the originator of this trope:
"When the Gigantes about Pallene chose to begin war against the immortals, Herakles fought on the side of the gods, and slaying many of the Sons of Ge [or Gaia, the 'Earth Goddess' -- RL] he received the highest approbation. For Zeus gave the name of Olympian only to those gods who had fought by his side, in order that the courageous, by being adorned by so honourable a title, might be distinguished by this designation from the coward; and of those who were born of mortal women he considered only Dionysos and Herakles worthy of this name." [Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.15.1.]
This metaphor alludes to an image painted in Hesiod's Theogony (links at the end) and in Plato's Sophist, one of his more profound surviving works. Indeed, that work and two of his other dialogues -- Theaetetus (Plato (1997e)) and Parmenides (Plato (1997d)) -- are the principle collective source of much of subsequent Idealist theory.
The section reproduced below (from the Sophist) revolves around a conversation between an Eleatic "Stranger" (who appears to be a follower of Parmenides) and a character called "Theaetetus":
"Stranger. We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as the result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to comprehend as that of not-being....
"...There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of essence.
"Theaetetus. How is that?
"Stranger. Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and trees; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body.
"Theaetetus. I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they are.
"Stranger. And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these matters.
"Theaetetus. True.
"Stranger. Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that which they call essence.
"Theaetetus. How shall we get it out of them?
"Stranger. With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will be very great difficulty, or rather an absolute impossibility, in getting an opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter. Shall I tell you what we must do?
"Theaetetus. What?
"Stranger. Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are, and more willing to answer in accordance with the rules of argument, and then their opinion will be more worth having; for that which better men acknowledge has more weight than that which is acknowledged by inferior men. Moreover we are no respecters of persons, but seekers after truth." [Plato (1997b), pp.267-68, 246a-246d. I have used the on-line version here.]
[The battle itself is described in Hesiod's Theogony (lines 675-715), available here.]
Again, from this it is quite clear that Marxist Dialecticians are far closer to the Idealist 'Gods' than they are to the materialist Giants!23
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
MS: All of the talking past each other is a result this: I say X; you say I mean Y, which is tied to a philosophical tradition Z…when all I said was X.
Not really, as the above sections show, I understand full well what MS means by X and it turns out that he did mean Y, after all (or he needs to be far clearer about what he does mean, and without using any more obscure jargon in the process of doing just that). We are talking past each other since I reject root-and-branch all forms of ruling-class thought (not 99%, or even 99.9%, but 100%), especially aspects of it introduced into Marxism by those who take Hegel seriously (upside down or 'the right way up'); but MS doesn't reject all of it -- partly because he doesn't see that the traditional jargon, and the method (of 'abstraction') he uses, belongs to ruling-class thought. [But see below for more on this.]
Much of the rest of MS's document appeared to me not to address issues I raised, so I will ignore it (just as he ignores much that I write); I will, however, confine myself to a few paragraphs, like this one:
MS: Abstraction, as a mode of thinking, cannot be defended in the abstract. That is essentially what you are asking me to do in your responses. To abstract is to abstract from something. On the very first page of Capital, what does Marx abstract from? The capitalist mode of production as it appears. What does he abstract? He abstracts the commodity because, in societies with a capitalist mode of production, wealth appears as 'an immense collection of commodities.' How does he analyze the commodity as an economic form? By abstracting from the commodity as an object of consumption (i.e., from the fact that the commodity can 'satisfy a human need').
As I have shown, whatever Marx and/or MS say, Marx can't have done this, whatever incantations are uttered over the words either of them use. We don't yet know what this mysterious 'process of abstraction' is, or how MS can possibly know what Marx meant by anything he had processed in his head. As noted above (in the passages excerpted from Essay Three), this theory makes concessions to bourgeois individualistic theories of knowledge, which undermine the social theory of knowledge and language that Marxists promote elsewhere. MS is like someone who picks up a copy of, say, Darwin's Origin from which every explanation of the process of natural selection has been removed, and thinks that after reading it he understands how evolution works. It would be no good that individual saying "Well, we have the real world and changed organisms, and that's all we need...". Without an explanation how this 'process of abstraction' works and how it avoids all the problems I have detailed in Essay Three (a fraction of which was quoted above), MS might just as well be speaking Martian for all the good it does.
We can see the confusion descending on MS when he says things like this:
MS: In the course of analysis, Marx demonstrates that it is not only "we" (or he) who make(s) abstraction from use-value. It is the social practice of generalized commodity production and exchange that abstracts from the useful characteristics labor (e.g., weaving) and the products of labor (e.g., linen), which gives them the value-form. This social abstraction is a necessary moment in the systematic logic of capital.... Rather, it is a social process (abstraction) that necessarily occurs in reality before it can be rationally reproduced in the mind (abstraction), since a rational reconstruction is a reconstruction of an already appropriated organic whole.
If 'abstraction' takes place 'in the mind' (and if we ignore all the sceptical implications and confusions that that idea brings in its train, partially outlined earlier) one might well wonder how a social practice can do this 'in the mind', too, and not outside the mind, which it will have to do if it is to have any effect on commodity production and exchange. Is society conscious? In a recent e-mail, MS asserted that capital has certain "purposes". And here we seen where importing anything from Hegel has landed us, we end up mystifying capital by talking as if we thought it was a human being!
As I noted earlier:
Feuerbach plainly got things completely the wrong way round; Hegel's 'God' is the projection of humanity inwards, not outwards. For DM-fans, ideas supposedly 'reflect' the world --, but they do this only if they allow Hegel's mystical and fractured 'logic' to control their thoughts, too.
Indeed, as Max Eastman noted:
"Hegelism is like a mental disease; you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]...
Which, of course, helps explain the semi-religious fervour with which the Sacred Dialectic is defended by all those whose brains it has colonised. [On that, see here and here.]
No wonder MS thinks capital can be conscious and can have "purposes"; he unwisely accepted the tall tale he found in Hegel, who projected humanity and society internally, into his 'thought' processes (aka his 'logic') as a 'reflection' of his idea of a self-developing 'God'. It is hardly surprising that anthropomorphic concepts then seeped into MS's understanding of Marx's economics. Hegel anthropomorphise his brain (and the world); MS anthropomorphised Das Kapital.
So, are commodities also produced and exchanged 'in the mind' too? Has MS now resiled from his earlier claim that 'abstraction' for Marx (and presumably for him) is "a mental process undertaken by thinking subjects." Is it a social process actioned by a sort of 'collective mind', or is it an individual process? Maybe it is both? If so, it would be interesting to see the proof that there is such a thing as a 'social mind' and that it can 'think'. Can it speak, too? Even more puzzling: it seems this 'collective mind' hit on all this before Marx did (unless we suppose this 'collective mind' only began to 'abstract' after Marx spilled the beans), and it managed to do so even without having read a word of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up'). Unless, of course, we suppose this 'collective mind' could read and comprehend Hegel, too!
MS: What else is he doing here if he is not abstracting? What is your position? Marx thought he was abstracting but he actually wasn't? When Marx explicitly says he is abstracting what is he doing? Making an error? A dogmatic imposition? You never engage or offer an alternative explanation of what Marx is doing when he says he is abstracting, or not that I am aware of. Your common noun criticism misses the mark as a critique of systematic dialectic. It simply does not apply.
I can't pass an opinion on this since MS has yet to tell us what this mysterious 'process of abstraction' is (or how it avoids the fatal objections I have outlined above). For all the good it does he might just as well have used "schmabstracting". Sure Marx uses the term "abstraction", but, as I also noted earlier:
In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does in these passages; he merely gestures at it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians. This isn't to malign Marx. Das Kapital is perhaps one of the greatest books ever written; but it would have been an even more impressive work had the baleful influence of Traditional Thought been kept totally at bay....
"It seems correct to begin with the real and the concrete…with e.g. the population…. However, on closer examination this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest…. Thus, if I were to begin with the population, this would be a chaotic conception of the whole, and I would then, by further determination, move toward ever more simple concepts, from the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many determinations and relations…. The latter is obviously scientifically the correct method. The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse." [Marx (1973), pp.100-01.]
What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity. Anyone who reads the above passage can actually see him doing this. They don't need to do a brain scan on Marx (even if he were still alive!), nor apply psychometric tests to follow his argument -- or, indeed, re-create his alleged 'abstractions', which they would have to do if the 'process of abstraction' were something we all do privately in our heads. And, they certainly don't have to copy Marx's supposed moves -- and they most certainly can't copy them, for Marx failed to say what he had actually done with the concepts/words he employed, or how he had 'mentally processed' them (if in fact he had done so!). Indeed, his 'instructions' about how to abstract the "population" are even less useful than John Lennon's famous remark that to find the USA you just had to turn left at Greenland. Hence, no one could possibly emulate Marx here since there are no usable details -- which, of course, suggests that Marx didn't in fact do what he thought he had done, or proposed to do, otherwise, careful thinker that he was, he would have spelt them out. More significantly, no one since has been able to reconstruct these mythical 'mental' moves, or show that their own weak gesture at applying this method is exactly the same as the one used by Marx -- or even that it yields the same results (as noted earlier).
In fact, it is quite apparent from the above passage that Marx had forgotten about his own refutation of this very process! [On that, see here, and again in the next sub-section, below.]
Of course, none of this is surprising. As we have seen, abstractionists become rather hazy when it comes to supplying the details of this mysterious 'process'; that is why, after 2400 years of this metaphysical fairy-tale having been spun -- over and above the sort of vague gesture theorists like Ollman offer their readers --, no one seems able to say what this 'process' actually is!
By way of contrast, the actual method Marx employed (as noted above: we can see him doing this on the page -- i.e., indulging in an intelligent and novel use of language) is precisely how the greatest scientists have always proceeded. In their work, they construct arguments in an open arena, in a public language -- albeit this is often accompanied by a novel use of old words --, which can be checked by anyone who cares to do so. This can't be done with Ollman's mythical "mental constructs".
What do I think? Marx used common nouns (most of which we all understand) and which can be checked in a public arena -- but, if he genuinely did all this 'in his head', they can't be checked. In that case, we don't need to do a brain scan on Marx to comprehend his work, which we'd have to do if 'abstraction' were something done in the privacy of one's head. [I won't repeat what I said earlier about this bourgeois individualist approach to 'abstraction'; readers are re-directed back to it for more details).
MS: So when you link to philosophical arguments about epistemology and language, I follow them. But I don’t play those word games. I've read Parmenides and Philosophical Investigations and damn near everything in between. Trust me, I'd love to forget them (and thankfully I largely have). For the most part, they do not advance my understanding of the critique of political economy. Hegel does. Hence my willingness to engage with Hegel's thought. I don't do it because it's enjoyable.
MS has yet to explain -- in non-question-begging terms, or without the use of yet more obscure jargon -- how Hegel manages to do this.
MS reminds me of those who tell me their theological studies help them understand the world, but when asked for details all we get is a word-salad, and a refusal to face the problems others have raised about such fanciful ideas.
Hegel-groupies also remind me of myself when I was studying Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals (which is, in my view, as great a work as his Critique of Pure Reason) in my second undergraduate year (1977-78). I was part of a seminar group of philosophy students, and we were sent off with a week to study this work and then attend class the following week prepared to summarise its core ideas. So, geek that I was, I spent hours and hours making page after page of notes on this amazing book ready for that seminar. So, the big day arrived, and the lecturer asked for someone to summarise Kant's key ideas. I was always in the habit of talking too much in such seminars, so I held back, hoping another student would take over. But no one else volunteered, so after a painful minute's silence I raised my hand and volunteered to contribute. The lecturer's face fell (she later told a student body meeting, in my presence, that when asking for contributions from students, she always began at the other end of the room to where I was sat whenever I was in her seminars!), but she had no other option but to call on me. So, over the next five minutes I unloaded a week's worth of compressed Kant. I regurgitated all those Kantian jargonised terms-of-art like a latter day clone, convinced that I understood this philosopher, the proof being that I could reel off all those Kantian concepts in some sort of plausible order. When I had finished I sat back rather pleased with myself, but the lecturer said "Unfortunately that is typical of those who study Kant and don't actually understand a word of what he is saying." She asked me several searching questions, to each of which I reeled off another barrage of Kantianisms. She again indicated that I had just reeled off load after load of jargon. "What does any of it mean?" she said, shooting me down in flames again. After another four or five such attempts, which received the same smack down, I gave up, rather nonplussed. No one else was going to try after that dressing down, so she proceeded to summarise Kant's main points in crystal clear ordinary language, shorn of all the usual Kantianisms and jargonised philosophical expressions. [Unlike my other tutors and lecturers, she wasn't even a Wittgensteinian. I think it is largely possible to do this with Kant, but not with Hegel, a vastly inferior thinker.]
I learnt a lesson that day that I have never forgotten. I even repeated it in the opening Essay of my site:
These Essays have been written from within a specific current within Analytic Philosophy -- and, it is worth adding, that perspective represents a minority and highly unpopular viewpoint among Analytic Philosophers, too! However, since the vast majority of DM-fans clearly lack any sort of background in this genre, many of the points made at this site have had to be pitched at a very basic level. Professional Philosophers will, therefore, find much here that will irritate them. That, however, is their problem. As I have already noted, this site isn't aimed at them.
In addition, I have endeavoured to write much of this material with the following thought in mind: "If this or that passage isn't accessible to ordinary working people, re-write it!" Now, I don't think for one second that I have everywhere succeeded in achieving that level of clarity or directness, but most of the material at this site has been written and re-written well over fifty times (no exaggeration!) with that sole aim in mind. That process will continue indefinitely. Naturally, it is for members of the target audience (i.e., working people, should they ever read these Essays!) to decide if I have succeeded or failed in achieving my stated aim.
Indeed, and in this regard, I am happy to be judged by them alone.
I am also irredeemably suspicious of those who can't express their ideas without the use of Hegelian, or other jargon drawn from Traditional Thought; and if they can't explain themselves in ordinary language, I refuse to believe they understand what they themselves are banging on about. Sad to say that is also true of my reception of MS's comments. Sure, like other HCDs, MS is an expert at reeling off pages of jargon, and I am sure he thinks he understands it -- just as I thought I understood Kant when I was reproducing all those unfiltered Kantianisms --, but in so far as he can't explain himself in ordinary language (free of all that jargon), and flatly refuses even to face the serious problems which that jargon creates, I just don't believe him. Of course, he can prove me wrong by producing an explanation of, say, "contradiction" (as Hegel thought he was using that word) employing only ordinary language, free of traditional forms-of-thought. He'll be the very first person in over 200 years to do that if he succeeds.
[In Essay Nine Part Two I have explained why dialectically-distracted comrades find comfort (and, indeed, some form of consolation for the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been such an abject failure) in the use of philosophical jargon and traditional forms-of-thought. It is hardly coincidental that they find this consolation in a work of Christian Mysticism. What is not acceptable is that they have the temerity to drag all this mystical gobbledygook along with them into the workers' movement.]
MS says he has largely forgotten Wittgenstein's Investigations. Well, that explains a lot.
MS: The last, and most interesting, use of abstraction by Marx is abstraction as "objective illusion." An objective illusion is a commonly shared misapprehension of reality. For instance, when workers see the products of their own labor as the productive power of capital they are under the spell of an objective illusion because this is how the social relations of production within capitalist society manifest themselves to the everyday consciousness, i.e., through capital as a "thing" lording over workers and controlling the production process. And it is in this sense that individuals in capitalist societies are "ruled by abstractions" (Grundrisse, pg. 164).
And yet it is far from clear how anyone can "share" a single abstraction, as I argued earlier. These 'abstractions' are privatise mental objects about which we know as much as we do about the Tooth Fairy. [I am not denying that people can share falsehoods, or mistakes, or misapprehensions, but they aren't these mysterious 'abstractions'.] How does MS know that his 'abstractions' are the same as or are different from anyone else's? If he can't know this, workers can't either, and hence they can't share them.
Just like every dialectician I have read (and I quote scores of them in Essay Two), MS is not averse to imposing these ideas on society, dogmatically, for what else is this:
MS: This understanding of abstraction is also related to the objective formation of a real abstraction that happens 'behind the backs' of individuals in the exchange process. That is, in exchange, individual concrete private labor is reduced to universal abstract social labor. This is an objective process, a real abstraction (i.e., a social practice of reduction), which occurs in capitalist societies.
Is there any evidence that concrete private labour is reduced to "universal abstract labour"? MS offers none (and no one else has -- or, if they have, they kept that pretty quiet), but that doesn't stop him telling us this is an "objective process". It is no good claiming that this helps us explain capitalism, since the old crystalline spheres used to explain the motion of the planets, too, but who now believes in those figments of the imagination? Indeed, as I explain in detail in Essay Ten Part One, countless defunct theories used to 'explain' all manner of things: for example, obsolete Caloric Theory was employed by Laplace to correct Newton's theory of sound, and Laplace's results were so accurate they remained unsurpassed for nearly a hundred years.
I then go on to point out the following:
In fact, if history is anything to go by, this has been the fate of the vast majority of previous theories. Even though most, if not all, at one time 'worked', were well-supported, or 'explained' this or that, the overwhelming majority were later abandoned. As Philosopher of Science, P K Stanford, notes:
"...[I]n the historical progression from Aristotelian to Cartesian to Newtonian to contemporary mechanical theories, the evidence available at the time each earlier theory was accepted offered equally strong support to each of the (then-unimagined) later alternatives. The same pattern would seem to obtain in the historical progression from elemental to early corpuscularian chemistry to Stahl's phlogiston theory to Lavoisier's oxygen chemistry to Daltonian atomic and contemporary physical chemistry; from various versions of preformationism to epigenetic theories of embryology; from the caloric theory of heat to later and ultimately contemporary thermodynamic theories; from effluvial theories of electricity and magnetism to theories of the electromagnetic ether and contemporary electromagnetism; from humoral imbalance to miasmatic to contagion and ultimately germ theories of disease; from 18th Century corpuscular theories of light to 19th Century wave theories to contemporary quantum mechanical conception; from Hippocrates's pangenesis to Darwin's blending theory of inheritance (and his own 'gemmule' version of pangenesis) to Wiesmann's germ-plasm theory and Mendelian and contemporary molecular genetics; from Cuvier's theory of functionally integrated and necessarily static biological species or Lamarck's autogenesis to Darwinian evolutionary theory; and so on in a seemingly endless array of theories, the evidence for which ultimately turned out to support one or more unimagined competitors just as well. Thus, the history of scientific enquiry offers a straightforward inductive rationale for thinking that there are alternatives to our best theories equally well-confirmed by the evidence, even when we are unable to conceive of them at the time." [Stanford (2001), p.9. Emphasis in the original.]....
So, if anything, practice shows that practice is unreliable! Indeed, as are past 'explanations'.
So, I am not impressed with claims that this mystified version of Marx's theory 'explains' capitalism -- especially if its proponents can't even explain their own theory!
MS: I bring up this last point to demonstrate how far afield your criticisms are from what I am (i.e., what Marx is) claiming. There's no direct appeal to the language of bourgeois philosophy in what I've said (other than Marx's use [of] Hegel to explain money). You have to drag what I am (i.e., what Marx is) saying through the muck of 2400 years of philosophy in order to criticize it as…I'm still not sure…what? A category mistake (e.g., thinking thinking occurs in the mind). A confusion (e.g., abstraction as thought-object is nothing more than common noun). Impossible (e.g., abstraction as a mode of thinking is not an actual cognitive function).
And yet that is what we have seen by the use of words like "essence" and "appearance", "necessity", "objective process", "thought-object", "consciousness", "reproduced in the mind", "organic whole", "simple abstract to the complex concrete", "dialectic of categories", and, indeed, "abstraction" itself (as well as the use others make of terms like "dialectical contradiction", "unity of opposites", "negation of the negation", etc.). Again, as I have pointed out in one of my Essays:
This helps account for the relaxed ease with which all dialecticians slip into the a priori mode-of-thought, and use traditional jargon, and why they all fail to notice when they are doing it -- even after it has been pointed out to them!
It all looks so 'obvious', so 'self-evident' -- so traditional....
This means that Hegel's doctrines (upside down or 'the right way up') mesh seamlessly with ideas they had already internalised before they encountered them -- one of which ideas is that it is the job of 'genuine' philosophers to concoct a priori theories like this. Marx's famous words, therefore, apply equally to them:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]
Notice how Marx argued that:
"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
So, they rule also as "thinkers", and this they do in "its whole range". Moreover, those who have no control over the system itself -- which includes every single one of the DM-classicists, as well as those who have led the movement and who have shaped its ideas ever since -- are plainly "subject" to its vice-like ideological grip. The "ruling intellectual force" can't fail to have affected such 'intellectuals' (Marxist or otherwise).
But, we needn't guess here. They already openly admit to this influence, if not glory in it.
And this is how the ideas of the ruling class have come to dominate Marxism -- comrades are totally oblivious of this since they think it is so natural and acceptable, hardly worth mentioning....
No wonder Dialectical Marxism has been such a long-term failure.
But, how do fans-of-the-dialectic manage to internalise these ideas before they even encounter them? Here is how (this is from another Essay):
The founders of this quasi-religion
[Dialectical Marxism] weren't workers; they came from a class that educated
their children in the Classics, the Bible, and Philosophy. This tradition taught
that behind appearances there lies a 'hidden world', accessible to thought
alone, which is more real than the material universe we see around us.
This world-view was initially concocted by ideologues of the ruling-class over
two thousand years ago. They did so because if you belong to, benefit from, or
help run a society which is based on gross inequality, oppression and
exploitation, you can keep order in several ways.
The first and most obvious way is through violence. This will work for a time,
but it is not only fraught with danger, it is costly and it stifles innovation
(among other things).
Another way is to win over the majority -- or, at least, a significant
proportion of 'opinion formers' (bureaucrats, judges, bishops, 'intellectuals',
philosophers, teachers, administrators, editors, etc.) -- to the view that the
present order either: (i) Works for their benefit, (ii) Defends 'civilised
values', (iii) Is ordained of the 'gods', or (iv) Is 'natural' and so can't be
fought against, reformed or negotiated with.
Hence, a world-view that rationalises one or more of the above is necessary for
the ruling-class to carry on ruling "in the same old way". While the content of
ruling-class thought may have changed with each change in the mode of
production, its form has remained largely the same for thousands of years:
Ultimate Truth (about this 'hidden world') can be ascertained by thought alone,
and therefore may be imposed on reality dogmatically
and aprioristically.
{Some might think this violates central tenets of HM,
in that it asserts that some ideas remained to same for many centuries; I have
addressed that concern, here.]
So, the non-worker founders of our movement -- who had been educated from
an early age to believe there was just such a 'hidden world' lying behind
'appearances', and which governed everything -- when they became
revolutionaries, looked for 'logical' principles relating to this abstract world
that told them that change was inevitable, and was part of the cosmic order.
Enter dialectics, courtesy of the dogmatic ideas of that ruling-class mystic,
Hegel. The dialectical classicists were quite happy to impose their 'new' theory
on the nature and society (upside down or the "right way up") -- as we saw in Essay
Two -- since
that is how they had been taught 'genuine' philosophers should behave.
That 'allowed' the founders of this
quasi-religion to think of themselves as special, prophets of the new order,
which workers, alas, couldn't quite comprehend because of their defective
education, their reliance on ordinary language and the 'banalities of
commonsense'.
Fortunately, history has predisposed these dialectical prophets to ascertain
truths about this invisible world on their behalf, which implied they were the
'naturally-ordained' leaders of the workers' movement -- indeed, one or two were
even 'Great Helmsmen', 'Great Teachers'. That in turn meant that as teachers of
the 'ignorant masses' they could legitimately substitute themselves for
the unwashed majority -- in 'their own interests', of course --
since they have been blinded by 'commodity fetishism', 'formal thinking', or
they have been bought off by imperial 'super profits'. In which case, 'the
masses' were 'incapable' of seeing the truth for themselves.
Unfortunately, these self-appointed leaders will need (materialist) workers to rescue them from themselves. Transforming the material conditions that give rise to such alienated thought-forms is the only way that Dialectical Day-Dreaming like this can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Dialectical Mystics are just going to have to rely on the material force of the working class to save them from the consequences of importing this virus of the mind into the workers' movement.
[On the phrase "ruling-class thought", see here.]
So, their socialisation in the teachings of religion, or even Traditional Philosophy, before they became Marxists, pre-disposes these comrades to look for hidden 'essences', or a secret world lying behind 'appearances', since that early socialisation in bourgeois society taught them that this is what genuine philosophy is all about. 'Dialectics' thus landed on fertile soil; the dice had been loaded long before they even opened Das Kapital. This also explains the puzzlement, and indeed the emotional reaction, when this dogmatic approach to 'knowledge' is questioned, or challenged, since it threatens the consolation these comrades find in such esoteric and highly specialised 'knowledge'. After all, if you think you can explain capitalism in such esoteric terms (knowledge not given to the common herd), and some Wittgensteinian upstart punches gaping holes in it, that is going to threaten the view you have of yourself as somehow superior to the common herd, just as it also threatens to remove your source of consolation. [I have entered into this in much more detail in the first half of Essay Nine Part Two, where I also develop a class analysis of the petty-bourgeois, or déclassé, intellectuals who dote on this sort of mystical esotericism, providing for the first time a historical materialist explanation of this phenomenon, and how it is connected with the long term failure of this inverted form of Christian Mysticism -- Dialectical Marxism.]
But, what about this?
MS: You have to drag what I am (i.e., what Marx is) saying through the muck of 2400 years of philosophy in order to criticize it as…I’m still not sure…what? A category mistake (e.g., thinking thinking occurs in the mind). A confusion (e.g., abstraction as thought-object is nothing more than common noun). Impossible (e.g., abstraction as a mode of thinking is not an actual cognitive function).
On the contrary such comrades have done this to themselves, and, indeed, to Marxism.
MS is not too sure what I am criticising "it as". I thought I had been clear from the get-go; if not let me be clear now: Dialectical Marxism (and Systematic Dialectics) is just another aspect of ruling-class ideology. Indeed, I have branded it (in Essay Nine Parts One and Two) as the ideology of substitutionist elements in Marxism.
However, I have nowhere claimed this: "A confusion (e.g., abstraction as thought-object is nothing more than common noun). Impossible (e.g., abstraction as a mode of thinking is not an actual cognitive function)." What I have argued is that instead of bothering with these obscure 'mental objects' (these mysterious 'abstractions' supposedly locked away in a socially-isolated brain), we should concentrate on the use of ordinary common nouns, employed in an open, public, and checkable arena. Nor have I argued that 'abstraction' is a "mode of thinking", since it is far from clear that anyone knows what this mysterious process is. I sure as hell do not, and I have yet to encounter anyone who does. Other than repeatedly using this word without justification, MS doesn't appear to know either.
Here's another example where MS just helps himself both to this word, and the obscure phrase "mental process":
MS: Neither the mental process of abstracting (thinking) nor abstractions (thought-objects) nor social processes (real abstractions) entail philosophical theories of about the Nature of Nature or the Nature of Society or the Nature of Being or the Nature of Truth. You are the one slapping on the philosopher's hat. Of course, it is possible for thinking and thought, abstract(ion) or not, to be attacked or justified philosophically. But, again, Marx wasn't saying, "Here is my theory of truth." He was saying, "Here is my critique of political economy." The claims he (and I) make(s) are about nothing more than a very specific, historically determined social form of production an exchange where social relations between people take on alienated, abstract forms that present themselves to the economic actors involved in producing them as "things." This is a 'perverted', 'distorted', 'bewitched', 'mystified', 'fetishized', 'inverted' world dominated by the commodity-form, which is full of 'metaphysical subtleties' and 'theological niceties' (all Marx's words). Using philosophical tools, even ones genetically tied to bourgeois forms of thought, to crack this nut is permissible. Since you are a Marxist (i.e., someone who understands social being forms consciousness), you should know bourgeois forms of thought are unavoidable. Marx was not thinking above bourgeois thought-forms. He was "thinking out of them" (Adorno's words).
(1) I certainly criticise ideas drawn from traditional thought philosophically (largely in Wittgenstein's sense of that word), but I am actually asking for the obscure words MS uses to be justified, or even explained, by the use of ordinary language, as Marx indicated we should:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases alone added.]
Would that other Marxists took this advice. Would that Marx had adhered to it in later life.
(2) And sure, Marx is saying "Here is my critique of political economy", so why we would want to re-mystify it is itself a mystery.
(3) It is good to see MS admit that this approach to capitalism is expressed by means of "bourgeois forms of thought" but I for one deny these are "unavoidable". If we take Marx's advice, re-quoted above, and return to the use of ordinary language, we can and should avoid this.
(4) I am indeed a Marxist, but I reject this sort language too: "social being forms consciousness". I reject the obscure Cartesian term "consciousness" for reasons set out at length in Essay Thirteen Part Three.
[Of course, I accept the theory that the ideas we are capable of forming, and which we do tend to form, depend on the Mode of Production in which we find ourselves as well as the class to which we belong (among several other factors).]
MS: It's difficult to glean your interpretation of Marx. You seem to be coming from analytic Marxism, which really isn't Marxist at all (at least in its understanding of Marx). I mean that sincerely, not as a cheap shot. You also show some sympathy for the Althusser in our discussion. From my perspective, Althusser is part of the traditional or worldview Marxism that attributes transhistorical economic laws to reality, which, in his reading, are overdetermined by the particular social production relations within capitalist society. That is, his assumptions are closer to dialectical materialism than mine, insofar as I do not interpret Marx's critique of political economy to be positing any transhistorical laws whatsoever.
(5) I don't really try to interpret Marx at my site; it wasn't set up to do that. Its main aim is to demolish 'dialectics' applied to nature and society (its secondary aim is to undermine all forms of Traditional Thought, the "ideas of the ruling-class"). That is because I am convinced (and can show) that this alien-class theory, coupled with the class origin and current class position of the 'leaders' of our movement, and its 'intellectuals', are just two of the many reasons why Dialectical Marxism has been such an abject and long-term failure.
Now, an accurate understanding of the nature of the commodity, or the falling rate of profit, might help us comprehend capitalism better, but it won't help us organise the working class, or fight the class war. At the cutting edge of the class war, active Marxists unfortunately accept Engels's regressive ideas (I have quoted scores of examples of this in Essay Two), so it is there that most of the damage is being done. [On that, see Essay Nine Part Two, here.]
That is the reason I concentrate on this aspect of Marxist theory and largely ignore Academic Marxism (and the fine points of interpreting Das Kapital). The following is what I have written about 'academic Marxism' (this comes from Essay Nine Part Two):
High Church Dialecticians [HCDs]:
HCD Marxists are in general openly contemptuous of the 'sophomoric ideas' found in most of the DM-classics, let alone the books and articles published by their lowly LCD-brethren (even though many of them seem to have a fondness for Engels's First 'Law') -- except, perhaps, Lenin's PN, since it is largely comprised of quotes from the Über-Guru Himself, Hegel.
[LCD = Low Church Dialectician, explained here.]
An excellent recent example of this elitist attitude can be found in Anderson (2007). Another, here and here.
More often than not, HCDs reject the idea that the dialectic operates outwith the social sphere, in nature, sometimes inconsistently using the aforementioned First 'Law' to account for the evolutionary 'leap' that underpinned our development from ape-like ancestors -- which tactic allows them to claim that human history and development are therefore unique --, just as they are equally dismissive of simple LCD souls for their adherence to every last word found in the DM-classics. Apparently, they don't contain enough philosophical gobbledygook, sufficient Hegel, or a surfeit of post-Hegelian, 'Continental Philosophy'.31
[Anyone familiar with High Church Anglicanism will know exactly what I am implying.]
HCDs are mercifully above such crudities; they prefer The Mother Lode -- straight from Hegel, Lenin's Philosophical Notebooks, or the writings of assorted latter day Hermeticists: György Lukács, Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Tony Smith, Tom Sekine, Robert Albritton, Chris Arthur, Bertell Ollman, Judith Butler, Frederic Jameson, Roy Bhaskar, and, of late, The Wafflemeister Himself, Slavoj Zizek.
This heady dialectical brew is often fortified with several dollops of hardcore jargon drawn from that intellectual cocaine-den, otherwise known as French Philosophy -- including the work of luminaries such as: Alexandre Kojève, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Michael Foucault, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Pierre Bourdieu, and, perhaps, worst of all, the charlatan's charlatan, Jacques Lacan.
Or, maybe even obscure ideas derived from that conveyor belt of systematic confusion: the Frankfurt School -- i.e., the work of Max Horkheimer, Theodor W Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, and Jürgen Habermas, among others.
[I have discussed Marcuse's somewhat dismissive attitude toward Wittgenstein and 'Ordinary Language Philosophy', here. In relation to this topic, see also my Essay, Was Wittgenstein a Leftist?]
Or, perhaps worse still, that haven of intellectual heroin: the work of Edmund Husserl, the Nazi, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer.31a
[Chomsky's penetrating thoughts on many of the above 'thinkers' can be accessed via Note 31a (link above), along with several other sharp criticisms of this depressing detour into dialectical darkness.]
HCDs are generally but not exclusively academics, or they are itinerant 'intellectuals' and 'bloggers'. In common with many of those listed above, tortured prose is their forte, and pointless existence is their punishment. Almost any randomly-selected issue of, say, Radical Philosophy, or Historical Materialism, will provide ample confirmation of the baleful affect the ideas and prose of many of the above have had on left-wing 'intellectuals'.
[This is yet another example to add to the chorus line of The Hallowed Society for the Production of Gobbledygook. Also, see my comments, here.]
Figure Five: Sisyphus College Recruitment Poster --
Aimed At HCDs Seeking A More Useful Existence
At least LCDs like to think their ideas are somehow relevant to the class struggle.
In contrast, High Church Dialectics is only good for the CV/Résumé.
The late Chris Harman expressed the above sentiments rather concisely a few years ago:
"There is a widespread myth that Marxism is difficult. It is a myth propagated by the enemies of socialism -- former Labour leader Harold Wilson boasted that he was never able to get beyond the first page of Marx's Capital. It is a myth also encouraged by a peculiar breed of academics who declare themselves to be 'Marxists': they deliberately cultivate obscure phrases and mystical expressions in order to give the impression that they possess a special knowledge denied to others." [Chris Harman, How Marxism Works, quoted from here. Bold emphasis and link added.]
Lenin concurred:
"The flaunting of high-sounding phrases is characteristic of the declassed petty-bourgeois intellectuals." ["Left-Wing" Childishness. Bold emphasis added. Unfortunately, Lenin didn't apply that valuable insight to what he found in Hegel's work.]
Plainly, the sanitised version of dialectics that HCDs inflict on their readers (purged of all those Engelsian 'crudities') isn't an "abomination" in the eyes of those sections of the bourgeoisie that administer Colleges and Universities --, or, indeed, those who publish academic books and journals.
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Nevertheless, the ranks of both factions, HCD and LCD alike, are well-stocked with conservative-minded comrades happy to appropriate the a priori and dogmatic thought-forms of two-and-a-half millennia of boss-class ideology, seldom pausing to give any thought to the implications of such easily won knowledge -- 'knowledge' obtained without the help of a single experiment, and concocted in the comfort of each philosophically-compromised head. If knowledge of the world is a priori, and based solely on armchair speculation, reality must indeed be Ideal.
Some might object that the above is a caricature of 'dialectical thought'; they might even be tempted to argue that dialectics is based as much on evidence as it is on the practice and experience not just of the party, but humanity in general. Alas, that naive belief was put to the sword in Essays Two, Seven Part One, Ten Part One, as well as Part One of this Essay.
It is worth adding that there are notable exceptions to the above sweeping generalisations; some academic Marxists do actively engage with the class struggle. The point, however, is that the 'High Theory' they crank out is irrelevant in this regard. Indeed, I can't think of even one example of the work of a single academic Marxist that has had any impact on the class war -- except perhaps negatively. [Any who disagree with that rather severe indictment are invited to e-mail me with the details of any counter-examples they think I might have missed.]
To be sure, one or two comrades have tried to come up with a few examples of the (positive) practical applications of 'the dialectic'. Unfortunately for them, I have shown that they all fail -- on that, see here, here, and here.
This has meant that the baleful influence of Hegelian Hermeticism becomes important at key historical junctures (i.e., those involving defeat or major set-back), since it acts as a materialist-sounding alternative to mainstream, Traditional Thought -- indeed, as we saw was the case with Lenin after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution in Russia, and again after the Second International caved in to Imperial warmongering at the beginning of WW1.
Dialectics (especially those parts that have been infected with the lethal HCD-strain) thus taps into thought-forms that have dominated intellectual life for over two thousand years, i.e., those that define the 'legitimate' boundaries of 'genuine' philosophy -- those that amount to little more than dogmatic thesis-mongering.
So, because of its thoroughly traditional nature, 'dialectics' is able to appeal to the closet "god-builders" and dialectical mystics that revolutionary politics seems to attract -- and who, in general, appear to congregate at the top of this ever-growing pile of dialectical disasters.
(2) I am not an Analytical Marxist (although I think Gerry Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History. A Defence is a major step in the right direction (if we ignore his technological determinism, his functionalism and his rejection of the Labour Theory of Value); I agree that those characters weren't Marxists, but they weren't anywhere near analytical enough, either.
(3) No, I have absolutely no interest in Althusser's work. I can't think how MS got that idea!
Finally, I agree with much that is expressed in the following passage MS quoted from Werner Bonefeld:
For the critique of political economy, economic nature is not the essence of economics. The essence of economics is society, and society is the social individual in her social relations. The circumstances that Man in her social relations appears as the personification of economic things -- a bearer of economic laws -- focuses the critique of political economy as a negative theory of society. In capitalism, Marx argues, the individuals are governed by the product of their own hands and what appears thus as economic nature is in fact a socially constituted nature that belongs to definite social relations. Social reality is this 'objective appearance': the social individual vanishes in her social world only to reappear in her price tag, by which she is governed. Yet this inversion of the social subject into the economic object is her own work. It does not derive from some abstract economic matter that objectifies itself in the acting subject, as if by a force of nature. For the critique of political economy the critical issue is thus not the discovery of general economic laws of history. Rather, its object of critique is the existent society, in which definite social relations subsist in the form of abstract economic forces, things endowed with an invisible will that 'asserts itself as a regulative law of nature' (Capital, pg. 168).
Except I'd strike out terms like the following: "a bearer of economic laws", "objective appearance", and "abstract economic forces", among others.
Exchange #10 -- April-May 2020
This has been labeled Exchange #10, but the following material has been culled from over half-a-dozen e-mails MS rapidly fired off over the space of a few days, only some of which were in response to the above -- although, once again, MS ignored the vast bulk of my reply to him, so, I am happy to return the favour in what follows and by-pass much of what he had to say. Hence, I have omitted sections that concern a number of side issues that arose when I responded to some of MS's e-mails, and I have heavily edited what is left since most of it is irrelevant to the above. I have posted some of this redundant material in Appendix B and Appendix C.
Unfortunately, as is the case with other fans-of-the-dialectic, MS grew rather upset at some of things I said. For example:
MS: I will expose you as fraud and that terrifies you.... This is 101 shit.... You might [be] a logician and revolutionary socialist, but you're not [a] Marxist....
I have explained why they all become emotional and irrational in Essay Nine Part Two. Here is about 15% of that material (exact details of the works referenced or quoted below can be found in the Bibliography to that Essay):
[Added on Edit: In what follows, when readers encounter the abbreviation "DM" it should be understood as standing not just for Dialectical Materialism, but also the sort of 'Materialist Dialectics' one finds in 'Systematic' and 'Academic' Marxism. That abbreviation saves me having to make this point over and over again. In other words, it applies to any and all interpretations of 'dialectics' that have appeared over the last 160 years in the Dialectical Marxist tradition -- except, of course, Marx's own use of "dialectics", which, as we found in Part One, had nothing to do with Hegel's obscure and confused ramblings (upside down or 'the right way up'). In what follows I have also gone out of my way to point out that I am referring not simply to Engels's 'Laws', which supposedly apply across the entire universe, but to 'dialectics' as it applies to history, politics and 'Marxist economics'.]
This half of Essay Nine deals with some of the important background reasons for the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism, linking it with the class origin and class position of those who control, or have controlled, its ideas and party structures. It also exposes the reasons why dialecticians cling to DM like terminally insecure limpets, despite the damage it has done to Marxism, and the fact that it has presided over 150 years of almost total failure.
In these respects this Essay is a continuation of the argument developed in Essay Nine Part One, which is further elaborated upon in Essay Ten Part One -- where the usual replies advanced by dialecticians to allegations like the above will be dealt with, and more general theoretical issues (concerning the relation between theory and practice) will be critically assessed.
Spoiler alert: In the aforementioned Essay it will be shown that truth can't be tested in practice, and that even if it could, practice has returned a very clear message: Dialectical Marxism has been refuted by history.
[Notice the use of the phrase "Dialectical Marxism", here -- and not "Marxism" --, as noted above, non-Dialectical Marxism hasn't been road tested yet. Some might think that the phrase "non-Dialectical Marxism" is an oxymoron; I have dealt with that response here and here.]
In which case, dialecticians would be well advised to avoid appealing to practice as proof of the correctness of their theory.
In Essay Ten Part One, I will also reveal why the claim that Dialectical Marxism has been a long-term and abject failure is no exaggeration....
[I then devote the next sub-section to noting how, in their own words, the revolutionary, dialectical left, both sides of the Atlantic, has badly stalled over the last twenty years. That material has been omitted. The rest of the Essay seeks to explain why that is so, and why Dialectical Marxism has been such a long term failure.]
In addition to providing a class analysis of leading figures in Dialectical Marxism today and in the past, as well as those responsible for its ideas, this Part of Essay Nine will also aim to show how and why:
(1) DM has been, and still is, detrimental to Marxism.
(2) DM has assisted in the fragmentation of our movement.
(3) DM has contributed in its own way to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism itself.
And:
(4) DM helps convince dialectically-distracted comrades that there are in fact no problems that need addressing (in this regard) -- and, even if there were, DM (supposedly Marxism's core theory!) and the class origin of leading Dialectical Marxists, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with them!
As intimated above, this Essay will also show that:
(5) The class origin of leading members of Dialectical-Marxist parties is one of the main reasons why revolutionary politics is deeply sectarian, profoundly unreasonable, serially abusive, alarmingly fragmentary, studiously arrogant, and notoriously ineffective.
DM thrown into the mix, of course, only succeeds in making a bad situation worse.
I will also explain how and why it manages to do that, too.
Part One demonstrated that DM not only doesn't, it can't represent a generalisation of working class experience; nor can it express their "world-view", whoever tries to sell it to them.
Worse still, it can't even represent a generalisation of the experience of the revolutionary party!
Nor has it any positive practical applications, or implications -- only negative.
It was also shown in Part One that DM can't be "brought" to workers "from the outside" (as Lenin seemed to suggest -- please note the use of the word "seemed" here!), because it has yet to be brought to a sufficient level of clarity so that its own theorists can even so much as begin to understand it themselves, before they think to proselytise unfortunate workers.
In that sense, dialecticians are still waiting for their own theory to be "brought" to them -- from the "inside"!
Alienation And Its Dialectical Discontents
Are Leading Marxists In Effect 'Class Traitors'?
It was alleged in Essay Twelve Part One (and in other Essays posted here, here, and here) that 'Marxist Dialectics' is a form of Linguistic Idealism (LIE) and, as such, reflects key features of ruling-class ideology.
[On my use of the phrase "ruling-class ideas/ideology", see here.]
However, what has not been established yet is how it is even conceivable that generations of leading revolutionaries and Marxist theorists with impeccable socialist credentials could have imported into the workers' movement ideas derived from the class enemy --, or at least from Philosophers who gave theoretical voice to the interests and priorities of that class.
Surely, this alone shows that the allegations made in these Essays are completely misguided at best, mendacious at worst.
Or, so it could be argued.
Of course, even its own most loyal and avid supporters can't -- indeed, don't -- deny that dialectics itself had to be introduced into the workers' movement from the outside; neither Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin nor Mao were proletarians. Moreover, there is no evidence that workers in the 19th century were avid readers of Hegel's Logic. The same can be said of workers since.
[The idea that Dietzgen, for example, was an exception to the above generalisation has already been batted out of the park, here.]
As is well-known, Hegel's system is the most absolute form of Idealism yet invented by the human race, and was itself situated right at the heart of an age-old ruling-class tradition (aspects of which are examined in detail in Essay Twelve and Fourteen (summaries here and here)).
Lenin admitted as much -- without perhaps realising the full significance of what he was saying:
"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added.]
More-or-less the same can be said about Plekhanov:
"Marxism is an integral world-outlook. Expressed in a nutshell, it is contemporary materialism, at present the highest stage of the development of that view upon the world whose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece by Democritus, and in part by the Ionian thinkers who preceded that philosopher." [Plekhanov (1908), p.11. Italic emphases in the original; links and bold emphasis added. I have covered this topic in much more detail below.]
Despite this, the importation of Hegel's ideas into Marxism is often justified by DM-supporters on the basis that he lived at a time when the bourgeoisie were the revolutionary class, which meant his ideas weren't as 'ideologically-tainted' -- so to speak -- as those of later thinkers.
Now, that excuse might work in relation to theorists like Smith or Ricardo, but it can't work with Hegel. Not only did he live in politically and economically backward Germany, where there was no such revolutionary bourgeois class, his ideas represented both a continuation of ruling-class thought and a regression to earlier mystical ideas about nature and society. [On this, see Essay Twelve Part Five and Essay Fourteen Part One (summaries here and here).]
Moreover, by no stretch of the imagination were Hegel's ideas scientific, unlike those of Smith and Ricardo. [That doesn't imply the work of these two can't be criticised, as, indeed, Marx proceeded to do.]
Nor can it be argued that Marx derived HM from Hegel; in fact (as Lenin himself half admits) both he and Hegel were influenced by the Scottish Historical School (of Ferguson, Millar, Hume, Smith, Steuart, Robertson, and Anderson).01 [On that, see Note 1.] If anything, Hegel's work helped slow down the formation of Marx's scientific ideas by mystifying them in the 1840s and 1850s.
[HM = Historical Materialism.]
It could be argued that Marx derived other important concepts from Hegel (such as alienation, or species being), but these ideas (or others very much like them) can be found in Rousseau, Fichte and Schelling (who were far clearer thinkers than Hegel ever was). Moreover, these concepts are easily replaced with materialist analogues -- which explains why Marx subsequently dropped them, adopting others. [On that, see White (1996).]
Finally, no dialectician, as far as I know, would argue the same for other figures who were writing at about this time, and who were much closer to the revolutionary class action (as it were). Does anyone think this of Berkeley? And yet he lived in and around what was the leading capitalist country on earth at the time: Great Britain. Or, Shaftesbury and Mandeville? Slap bang in the middle these two. And, it is little use pointing out that they wrote shortly after the reaction to the English Revolution, since Hegel did, too, after the reaction to the French Revolution. Nor is it any use arguing that these two were card-carrying ruling-class hacks, since the same can be said of Hegel. Or, even that one of them was an aristocrat. It might be news to some, but Hegel wasn't a coal miner or a stable hand!
Indeed, the only reason Hegel is chosen for special treatment is because of contingent features of Marx's own biography. Had Marx's life taken a different course, or had Hegel died of typhoid forty years before he actually did, does anyone really think we would now be bothering with dialectics? It is no surprise, therefore, to find that Marx himself moved away from Hegel and Philosophy all his life.
[The first of those controversial allegations was substantiated in Part One of this Essay; the second, here.]
In that case, and contrary to what Lenin said, we should exclude Marx himself (at least in relation to his more mature work) from the above seriously compromised ruling-class pedigree.
Independently of this, it could be objected that this allegedly class-compromised background isn't sufficient to condemn DM. After all, it could be argued that the advancement of humanity has always been predicated on practices, concepts and theories developed by individuals freed from the need to toil almost every day to stay alive -- for example, the work and ideas of scientists, philosophers, mathematicians, technologists, inventors and the like. Surely, this doesn't automatically impugn every idea drawn from outside the workers' movement, or by non-workers. Neither does it mean that philosophical notions are in general of no use to revolutionaries. Indeed, denouncing certain beliefs just because they are alien to the working-class is not only ultra-left, it is inconsistent with key ideas found in HM itself. In that case, the fact that DM is based on Hegel's system doesn't automatically impugn it, especially if the latter has been given a materialist make-over (as Marx himself argued), and has subsequently been tested in practice for well over a century.
Furthermore, the origin of DM goes back many centuries, and is related in complex ways to the development of class society and thus of humanity in general. Admittedly, that implicates this process in the formation of ideas representing the theoretical interests of former and current ruling-classes. But, even granting that, such ideas have also featured in the overall development of human knowledge -- indeed, many of them have been integral to the advancement of science, and thus of industry and technology. Considerations like these do not compromise DM in any way; on the contrary, as Lenin noted, this complex set of connections (linking DM with the very best of human endeavour, theoretical and practical) constitutes one of its strengths. Dialectical thought is thus not only part of the theoretical maturing process of humanity it is a vital component in its further development.
Or, so it could be argued, once more.1
However, DM isn't quite so easily exculpated. That is so for several reasons:
(1) DM-theses make no sense. Anyone who thinks otherwise is invited to say clearly (and for the first time ever) what sense they do make. As the Essays posted at this site have shown, anyone who attempts that modern-day 'labour of Sisyphus' will face an impossible task.
(2) DM-concepts hinder the development revolutionary theory and practice. We saw that in more detail in Essay Ten Part One -- for example, in connection with Lenin's advice relating to a certain glass tumbler. [Other examples are given below.]
(3) DM is locked in a tradition of thought that has an impeccable ruling-class pedigree. No wonder then that it hangs like an albatross around our necks, to say nothing of the negative effect it has had on generations of Dialectical Marxists (these are detailed below, too).
(4) Although many claim that science is intimately connected with earlier philosophical and religious or mystical forms-of-thought, that is in fact less than half the truth. Indeed, materialist and technological aspects of science haven't been as heavily dependent on such ruling-class ideas as many believe. [That rather bold claim will be substantiated in Essay Thirteen Part Two (when it is published sometime in 2020).]
(5) DM-concepts undermine ordinary language and common understanding; this means that workers have had these alien-class ideas inserted into their heads against the materialist grain, as it were. As such, DM (a) fosters passivity, (b) rationalises substitutionist ideology, (c) aggravates sectarianism and (d) helps motivate corruption.1a [More on these below, and in Part One. On the phrase "common understanding", see here.]
(6) The materialist flip allegedly performed on Hegel's system, so that its 'rational core' might be appropriated by revolutionaries, has been shown not in fact to have been through 180º, as is often claimed, but through the full 360. [On that, see especially Essays Twelve Part One and Thirteen Part One.]
(7) It isn't being claimed here that DM is false because of its ruling-class pedigree; on the contrary, it is being maintained that this 'theory'/'method' is far too vague and confused even to be described as either true or false; it doesn't make it that far. Nevertheless, its deleterious effects can be traced to its dependency on ruling-class forms-of-thought. [More on that throughout this Essay, and in Essay Fourteen Part Two.]
(8) Practice has in fact refuted dialectics. Either that, or the alleged truth of DM has never actually been tested in practice.
(9) Finally, and perhaps more importantly, DM has played its own small, but not inconsiderable, part in helping engineer the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism in all its forms, parties and tendencies. In addition, as noted above, DM has helped aggravate the serious personal, organisational and political corruption that generations of petty-bourgeois party 'leaders' have brought with them into the movement.
These are serious allegations; those that haven't already been substantiated (in other Essays) will be expanded upon and defended in what follows.
In spite of this, it could be argued that the above counter-response is totally unacceptable since it ignores the fact that some of the very best class fighters in history have not only put dialectics into practice, they have woven it into the fabric of each and every classic, and post-classic, Marxist text. Indeed, without dialectics there would be no Marxist theory; in fact, it would be like "a clock without a spring":
"While polemicising against opponents who consider themselves -- without sufficient reason -- above all as proponents of 'theory,' the article deliberately did not elevate the problem to a theoretical height. It was absolutely necessary to explain why the American 'radical' intellectuals accept Marxism without the dialectic (a clock without a spring)." [Trotsky (1971), p.56. Bold emphasis added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[Which is rather odd since Essay Seven Part Three has shown that if DM were true, change would be impossible.]
How could this be, or even have been, conceivable if the above allegations were correct? And what alternative theory or literature (that has been tested in the 'heat of battle', as it were) can Ms Lichtenstein point to that recommends her ideas as superior to those found in this proven tradition, one stretching back now over 150 years?
Much of the above volunteered response (in fact, it is a very brief summary of a handwritten letter sent by John Molyneux to a supporter of this site many years ago) is demonstrably misguided. The link between DM and successful practice was irrevocably severed in Essay Ten Part One, and will be further undermined in what follows.
Furthermore, very few of the classic Marxist texts (that is, outside the DM-cannon -- i.e., AD, DN, MEC, PN, etc.) mention this 'theory' (except in passing). Indeed, despite an 'orthodox' tradition that says differently -- and as Part One of Essay Nine shows, here and here --, Das Kapital itself is a Hegel-, and DM-free zone. But, even if that weren't the case, the fact that Dialectical Marxism has been such a long-term failure ought to raise serious questions about the deleterious influence 'dialectics' has had on HM, and on revolutionary practice in general.
Indeed, if Newton's theory had been as spectacularly unsuccessful as Dialectical Marxism has been, his ideas would have faced peremptory rejection within a few years of his classic work, Principia, rolling off the press.
In addition, a continuing commitment to dialectics just because it was good enough for the 'founding fathers' of our movement -- and for no other reason -- is itself based on the sort of servile, dogmatic and conservative mind-set that permeates most religions.1b
There is, indeed, something decidedly unsavoury witnessing erstwhile radicals appealing to tradition as their only reason for maintaining their commitment to such class-compromised ideas -- especially since this doctrine hasn't served us too well for over a century, and remains unexplained to this day.
Which brings us to the next main point.
Dialectics And Marx's Thoughts About Religious Alienation
As it turns out, and as will now be argued, the reason why the majority of revolutionaries not only willingly accept the ruling-class ideas encapsulated in DM, but also cling to them like terminally-insecure limpets, is connected with the following four considerations:
(1) Marx's analysis of the nature and origin of religious alienation -- allied with his rejection of Philosophy.
(2) Lenin's warning that revolutionaries may sometimes respond to defeat and disappointment by turning to Idealism and Mysticism.
(3) The biographies and class origins of leading Marxist dialecticians.
(4) The fact that DM not only helps mask the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism itself, it provides its acolytes with a source of consolation for unrealised expectations and regularly dashed hopes.
These seemingly controversial allegations will now be expanded upon, and then defended in depth....
Dialectics And Consolation: The Irrational Kernel inside The Mystical Shell
Item One (from above): Concerning religion, Marx famously argued as follows:
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." [Marx (1975b), p.244. Bold emphases alone added; some paragraphs merged.]
Of course, no one is suggesting that Dialectical Marxism is a religion -- but it certainly functions in ways that render it analogous to one.
Indeed, as Marx also noted:
"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis and link added.]
So, "philosophy is nothing but religion rendered into thought" -- in other words, philosophy is a far more abstract source of consolation. Naturally, that implies the same is true of DM....
These serious allegations along with their basis in HM will now be explained.
Plainly, revolutionaries are human beings with ideas in their heads, and every single one of them had a class origin, later took on a given class position (as a result of work or party/revolutionary activity), or now has a current class position. The overwhelming majority of those who have led our movement or who have influenced its ideas didn't come from the working class. Even workers, if they become full-time or "professional revolutionaries", are thereby rendered de-classé -- or even petty-bourgeois -- as a result. Since the social being of these comrades is a reflection of their class origins and current class position, it is no surprise, therefore, to discover that they have allowed "ruling ideas" to dominate their thought.
Of course, the allegation that the above individuals have appropriated these ideas -- for the same sorts of reasons that the religious hold onto their beliefs, which is because of their class origin or current class position --, will be regarded by dialecticians as so patently false it will be rejected out-of-hand as "crude reductionism".
Nevertheless, as far as I am aware, no Marxist Dialectician has subjected the origin of DM, or the reasons for its adoption by the vast majority of comrades, to any sort of class, or even materialist, analysis.
To be sure, they will often subject the ideas of their opponents or their enemies (both Marxist and non-Marxist -- examples are given below) to some form of impromptu class analysis, but they won't do the same for their own acceptance of ruling-class thought-forms, nor yet the acceptance of these ideas by most Marxists -- and certainly not for their adoption by every single leading Marxist (except Marx). Apparently, that thought doesn't even occur to them!
This suggests that dialecticians see themselves as exempt from a Marxist analysis of the origin of their own ideas, and that they somehow think they are immune from the material constraints that affect the rest of humanity.
[We will see this frame-of-mind resurface elsewhere as arrogance and an almost sociopathic attitude adopted toward fellow Marxists (especially female comrades), in what can only be called a Raskolnikov-like manner.]
Nevertheless, it will be maintained here that these comrades have adopted alien-class ideas like these for at least four reasons:
First: Because of their petty-bourgeois, non-working class origin -- and as a result of their socialisation and the 'superior' education they have generally received in bourgeois society -- the vast majority of the above comrades have had "ruling ideas", or ruling-class forms-of-thought, forced down their throats almost from day one.
[More on this below. See also Essays Two and Three Parts One and Two.]
Second: Because Dialectical Marxism has been so spectacularly unsuccessful, revolutionaries have had to convince themselves that (a) This isn't really so, (b) That the opposite is in fact the case, or that (c) This is only a temporary state of affairs. They have to do this otherwise many of them would simply give up. In view of the fact that they also hold that truth is tested in practice they have also been forced to conclude that one or more of (a), (b) and (c) must be the case.
However, because dialectics teaches that appearances are "contradicted" by underlying "essences" (i.e., that what might on the surface appear to be such-and-such is in reality the exact opposite), it is able to fulfil a unique role in this respect, motivating or rationalising (a), (b) and/or (c), above. In this way, it provides comrades with much needed consolation in the face of 'apparent' failure, convincing them that everything is fine with the core theory -- or, perhaps, that things will change for the better, one day. This then 'allows' them to ignore the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism, rationalising it as a mere "appearance", and hence either false or illusory.
So, faced with 150 years of set-backs, defeats and disasters, revolutionaries who will, in all seriousness, tell any who will listen that "truth is tested in practice", will in the next breath respond with something like the following: "Well, these set-backs, defeats and disasters don't prove dialectics is false!"
At that point, practice ceases to be a test of the truth or the validity this theory/method.
Hence, just like the genuinely religious -- who every day look upon the evil and suffering in the world and see it as its opposite, as an expression of the 'Love of God', who will make all things well in the end -- dialecticians survey the last 150 years and still see the 'Logic of Development' moving their way, and then infer that all will be well in the end, too. Here, for example, is Plekhanov:
"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…. When you apply the dialectical method to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content….' In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin and destruction…. [M]odern science confirms at every step the idea expressed with such genius by Hegel, that quantity passes into quality….
"[I]t will be understood without difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical thinking...[that] quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps, interruptions in gradualness…. That's how all Nature acts…." [Plekhanov (1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases alone added. Several paragraphs merged. (Unfortunately, the Index page for the copy of this book over at The Marxist Internet Archive has no link to the second half of Chapter Five, but it can be accessed directly here. I have informed the editors of this error. Added June 2015: they have now corrected it!)]
"All that exists can be taken as an example to explain the nature of dialectics. Everything is fluid, everything changes, everything passes away. Hegel compares the power of dialectics with divine omnipotence. Dialectics is that universal irresistible force which nothing can withstand." [Plekhanov (1917), pp.601-02. Bold emphasis added.]
"Philosophy is nothing else than religion rendered into thought." [Marx.]
Reading Plekhanov with his reference to 'divine omnipotence', we can perhaps see why Marx was right.
[Admittedly, not every DM-theorist is as deterministic as Plekhanov, but which of the above statements (for instance, about the universal applicability of the dialectic (in nature or society), or the fact that everything changes into its opposite) are they prepared to abandon?]
This means that the theory that prevents DM-fans from facing reality (since it tells them appearance is contradicted by 'essence') is the very same theory that also prevents them from examining the role that it has played in their long-term failure, inviting yet another generation of set-backs and disasters by masking these unwelcome facts.
Apparently, therefore, the only two things in the entire universe that aren't interconnected are the long term failure of Dialectical Marxism and its core theory!
[This theme is developed below, and in Essay Ten Part One (where the usual objections to the above allegations have been neutralised).]1c
Third: Just like the Bible, which supplies its acolytes with a surfeit of 'reasons' to accuse others of not 'understanding the Word of God', Dialectical Marxism, with its own 'sacred texts' beloved of the 'orthodox', also provides dialecticians with an obscure theory that 'allows' them to claim that other, rival DM-theorists, don't 'understand' dialectics -- or even that they ignore/misuse it --, and that only they, the 'true bearers of the flame', are capable of grasping its inner meaning. This then 'enables' them to anathematise and castigate the rest as un-Marxist, or even anti-Marxist. In short, it puts in the hands of inveterate sectarians (of which Marxism has had more than its fair share) an almost infinitely malleable, ideological tool that is pliable enough to prove anything whatsoever and its opposite (often this trick is performed by the very same theorist in the same article or speech), simply because it glories in contradiction.
[Again, scores of examples (and that is no exaggeration!) of the above phenomena are given below.]
Fourth: It provides dialecticians with an exclusivising set of dogmas that sets them above the 'common herd' -- or, indeed, those who are lost in the banalities of 'commonsense' and the cloying mists of 'formal thinking'. This now 'confirms' their self-appointed, pre-eminent status in the class war and the workers' movement since they alone understand nature and society.
In short, DM has become the ideology of substitutionist elements within Marxism.
[That was discussed in more detail in Part One.]
In addition, the above phenomena have the effect of rendering many such comrades insufferably arrogant, which further motivates them into treating others in the movement (often those in the same party!) with haughty contempt, condescending indifference, or even callous inhumanity. After all, if you are the sole bearers of 'the word delivered from off the mountain top', this makes you special, superior to the 'rank-and-file' -- which means that anyone who disagrees with you deserves ostracism and expulsion, at best, imprisonment or death, at worst.
[Those serious allegations will be substantiated throughout the rest of this Essay.]
[The question whether the above analysis is an example of 'crude reductionism' is taken up again in even more detail, below.]
Despite this, it might still be wondered how this relates to anything that is even remotely relevant to the ideas entertained by hard-headed revolutionary atheists. Surely, it could be argued, any attempt to trace a commitment to DM back to its origin in allegedly alienated thought-forms is both a reductionist and an Idealist error.
Fortunately, Lenin himself supplied a materialist answer to this apparent conundrum, and John Rees kindly outlined it for us when he depicted the period of demoralisation following upon the failed 1905 Russian revolution in the following terms:
"[T]he defeat of the 1905 revolution, like all such defeats, carried confusion and demoralisation into the ranks of the revolutionaries…. The forward rush of the revolution had helped unite the leadership…on strategic questions and so…intellectual differences could be left to private disagreement. But when defeat magnifies every tactical disagreement, forcing revolutionaries to derive fresh strategies from a re-examination of the fundamentals of Marxism, theoretical differences were bound to become important. As Tony Cliff explains:
'With politics apparently failing to overcome the horrors of the Tsarist regime, escape into the realm of philosophical speculation became the fashion….'
"Philosophical fashion took a subjectivist, personal, and sometimes religious turn…. Bogdanov drew inspiration from the theories of physicist Ernst Mach and philosopher Richard Avenarius…. [Mach retreated] from Kant's ambiguous idealism to the pure idealism of Berkeley and Hume…. It was indeed Mach and Bogdanov's 'ignorance of dialectics' that allowed them to 'slip into idealism.' Lenin was right to highlight the link between Bogdanov's adoption of idealism and his failure to react correctly to the downturn in the level of the struggle in Russia." [Rees (1998), pp.173-79, quoting Cliff (1975), p.290. Bold emphases and links added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Some paragraphs merged.]
Cliff himself continues:
"With politics apparently failing to overcome the horrors of the Tsarist regime, escape into the realm of philosophical speculation became the fashion. And in the absence of any contact with a real mass movement, everything had to be proved from scratch -- nothing in the traditions of the movement, none of its fundamentals, was immune from constant questioning.... In this discussion Bogdanov, Lunacharsky, Bazarov and others tried to combine Marxism with the neo-Kantian theory of knowledge put forward by Ernst Mach, and Richard Avenarius. Lunacharsky went as far as to speak openly in favour of fideism. Lunacharsky used religious metaphors, speaking about 'God-seeking' and 'God-building'. Gorky was influenced by Bogdanov and Lunacharsky.... Lenin's reaction was very sharp indeed. He wrote to Gorky, 'The Catholic priest corrupting young girls...is much less dangerous precisely to "democracy" than a priest without his robes, a priest without crude religion, an ideologically equipped and democratic priest preaching the creation and invention of a god.'" [Cliff (1975), pp.290-91. Bold emphases and links added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged; minor typo corrected.]
It is quite clear from this that the experience of defeat (and the lack of a significant materialist input from a mass working-class movement) re-directed the attention of certain revolutionaries toward Idealism and the search for mystical explanations for the serious set-backs Russian Marxists had witnessed in and around 1905.
Plainly, this search provided these comrades with some form of consolation -- just as Marx had alleged of religious belief pure and simple, and as Lenin himself implied.
But, there is another outcome that Rees and others have failed to notice: this major set-back turned Lenin toward philosophy and dialectics. These were subjects he had largely ignored up until then.2 While it is true that Bogdanov and the rest turned to Mach, Berkeley, Subjective Idealism, and other assorted irrationalisms, it is equally clear that Lenin himself looked to Hegel and Hermetic Mysticism.
Nevertheless, Lenin's warning shows that revolutionaries themselves aren't immune from the pressures that prompt human beings in general to seek consolation in order to counteract disappointment, demoralisation and alienation. As we have seen, Lenin was well aware that ruling-class ideas, which 'satisfy' such needs, could enter the revolutionary movement from the "outside", or would become much more prominent, at such times.
Even more profound disappointments confronted Lenin a few years later when WW1 broke out. Kevin Anderson takes up the story (without perhaps appreciating its significance):
"The outbreak of World War 1 in 1914 shattered European liberals' belief in peaceful evolutionary progress. To Marxists, however, most of whom already believed that capitalism was a violent and warlike system, an equally great shock occurred when, yielding to the pressure of domestic patriotic sentiment, most of the world's socialist parties, including the largest and most important one, the German Social Democracy, came out in support of the war policies of their respective governments.... So great was the shock to Lenin that when he saw a German newspaper report on the German Social Democracy's vote to support the war, he initially thought that it was a forgery by the Prussian military for propaganda purposes.... Once he arrived in Bern, Lenin moved quickly in two seemingly contradictory directions: (1) he spent long weeks in the library engaged in daily study of Hegel's writings, especially the Science of Logic, writing hundreds of pages of notes on Hegel, and (2)...he moved toward revolutionary defeatism...." [Anderson (1995), p.3. Bold emphasis alone added; paragraphs merged. See also Krupskaya's remarks, here.]2a
Just as Christians often turn to the Bible in times of stress or when depressed, so Lenin looked to the writings of that Christian Mystic, Hegel. Thoroughly disappointed with the course of events (in this capitalist "vale of tears"), Lenin turned his face toward this source of quasi-religious consolation and away from the material world of woe, in the direction of a hidden world governed by a veritable army of invisible entities -- 'abstractions', 'essences', 'concepts', and, of course, 'Being', 'Nothing' and 'Becoming' themselves -- in alliance with a battalion of mysterious forces comprising the DM-Trinity Itself: 'contradiction', 'sublation', 'mediation'.
Is it possible, then, that revolutionaries of the calibre of Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Plekhanov and Trotsky were tempted into seeking metaphysical consolation of the sort depicted in this Essay and at this site? Is this the case even though Lenin accused others of this himself? Is it even conceivable that they opened themselves up to the alien-class ideas that later found expression in DM, and for these reasons?
As we have seen in other Essays posted at this site (especially Essays Three Parts One and Two, Twelve Part One, the rest of Twelve, and Fourteen Part One (summaries here and here)), and as Lenin himself acknowledged, dialectics is shot-through with ideas, concepts and thought-forms imported from Traditional Philosophy (which ideas, concepts and thought-forms were in turn invented by theorists who, undeniably, had material and ideological interests in rationalising the status quo and ruling-class hegemony). Indeed, in many places it is hard to tell the difference between DM and open and honest Mysticism (as Essay Fourteen Part One will demonstrate, when it is published -- until then, check this out).
This more than merely suggests that the above allegations aren't completely wide-of-the-mark.
On the contrary, as we will see, they hit the bull's eye smack in the middle.
But, is there anything in the class origin and class background of leading comrades that pre-disposed them toward such an unwitting adoption of this rarefied form of boss-class ideology?
Does defeat automatically lead to dialectics?
Should DM in fact stand for Demoralised Marxists?
The first of these questions can be answered relatively easily by focussing on item Four above, and then on the periods in which revolutionaries invented, sought out, or reverted in a major way to using, or appealing to, classical concepts found in DM. Upon examination, a reasonably clear correlation can be seen to exist between periods of downturn in the struggle and subsequent 're-discoveries' of Hegel and DM by aspiring dialecticians -- with the opposite tendency kicking in, in more successful times.3
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
[This comes from Note 3:
Hegel's work can itself be seen as a response to the failure of the French Revolution, prompting his own retreat into Dialectical Mysticism. There is an admirably clear account of the demoralisation of 'intellectuals' that swept across Europe at the turn of the 18th century -- in John Rees's book itself (pp.13-54)! Clearly, Rees failed to notice the obvious connection between Hegel's demoralisation and his subsequent search for consolation in the sort of Christian Mysticism he so effortlessly conjured into existence (literally) out of "Nothing" -- later to be appropriated and given a full 360º flip (not the reputed 180º) by Marxist dialecticians afflicted with the same malaise.
Incidentally, the last twenty or thirty years have witnessed a significant stampede 'back to Hegel' among Academic Marxists (many of whom I have characterised as HCDs). This is clearly connected with the change in the balance of class forces that has taken place internationally since the mid-, to late-1970s. [Chris Arthur (no doubt inadvertently) plots its course in Arthur (2004), pp.1-16. Also see Redding (2007) for the same phenomenon among 'Analytic' Philosophers. (I have put 'scare' quotes around the word "Analytic" here since, to my mind, anyone who attempts to rehabilitate that charlatan, Hegel, automatically ceases to be an Analytic Philosopher.) I will add a few comments about Redding's book to Essay Twelve Part Five. In the meantime, readers are encouraged to check out other comments I have made about Redding, here and here (where I have systematically undermined a key argument Redding has appropriated from Kant in his (Redding's) attempt to explain what 'real negation' is in Hegel).]
Academics, it seems, require a far 'superior' source of consolation; none of those nasty, cheap opiates beloved of LCD comrades for them!
The 'revival' of almost pure, unadulterated Hermetic Mysticism in the halls of Marxist academe has also found expression in journals like Historical Materialism, Radical Philosophy and (on-line) Cultural Logic. It can also be seen in the recent foundation of the (insular, if not parochial) Marx & Philosophy Society, as well as in (insular, and, likewise, parochial) books like Marx and Contemporary Philosophy (i.e., Chitty and McIvor (2009)), which manage to omit all mention of the vast bulk of Contemporary Philosophy (except, there is one chapter devoted to Analytical Marxism -- which is now a defunct 'tradition', that even at its 'height' was a back-water of Analytic Philosophy -- in the aforementioned book).
If these characters had set out to be totally irrelevant -- at least as far as much of Modern Philosophy is concerned -- they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
[One of the reasons for this selective blindness lies in the fact that HCDs seem quite incapable of writing with any clarity (except, perhaps, as part of a job application), and plainly prefer the same level of obscurity in those they judge 'acceptable' philosophers. But, just try telling any of them that! You'll find yourself on the receiving end of a stream of yet more gobbledygook -- or perhaps even abuse. You will get nowhere. As my old Professor of Logic used to say, their heads are so "full of noise" nothing gets through. Chomsky says something similar.
Moreover, we regularly encounter similar episodes (i.e., a preference for Hermetic Idealism) in subsequent generations of revolutionaries, which intellectual slide reveals the permanent historical and ideological connection between German Mysticism and Dialectical Marxism itself. In addition, this underlines the link that also exists between the class-origin of the DM-classicists (as well as countless other DM-fans) and their fondness for Traditional Philosophy, particularly in times of isolation, retreat and defeat.
Indeed, and as a matter of fact, the DM-classicists and contemporary dialecticians were/are exclusively drawn from, or now belong to, the petty-bourgeoisie or they are simply de-classé. Of course, such a background is no defect in itself. But, the founders of Marxism and contemporary dialecticians don't live in air-tight containers, hermetically sealed against contemporaneous social and ideological influence. Those influences clearly found a sympathetic ear, and were given pride-of-place in the theoretical work of these pioneer dialecticians. [I explain why that is so later on in this Note and below.]
Hence, early revolutionary theorists -- who lived in semi-feudal Germany and Russia, which were intellectually dominated by Mysticism and Idealism -- found themselves in a society with no developed or assertive working class from which to learn. Workers themselves couldn't provide a materialist counter-weight to the socially-induced, Idealist inclinations of these intellectual pioneers. This meant that the theories developed by the very first DM-classicists would automatically bend far too far in the direction of ideas and concepts that have always dominated both traditional theory and traditional theorists -- that is, in this case, toward ruling-class forms-of-thought current in Europe and Germany at the time. Workers in Germany and Russia were far too weak, disorganised, and certainly too few in number in the nineteenth century to mount a significant challenge to the confident ruling-classes of their day -- or, indeed, impact on the concepts that early DM-theorists began to import into the movement, and then develop in the direction of DM.
[On this, see Note 13a2. Why I have used the phrase "socially-induced, Idealist inclinations" in relation to the DM-classicists will be explained presently.]
Moreover, continuous and regular disappointment with the very class upon which the hopes of European and Russian radicals were pinned must have been a constant factor that also influenced revolutionary thought during this period. Repeatedly dashed hopes and expectations (that a revolutionary workers' movement would emerge in mid-to-late 19th century Europe) meant that the tendency to seek consolation in mystical philosophy clearly became irresistible.
And this isn't mere speculation; we know that this is precisely what happened -- and is still happening. These facts are clear enough from the biographies of European radicals (including those of Marx and Engels, and later those of Lenin and Trotsky -- and even later, in the thoughts and careers of more recent dialecticians).
An unshakable faith in workers' revolutionary potential coupled with a belief in the proximity of the revolution (which is clear for all to see, for example, in the Marx-Engels correspondence, and elsewhere), alongside the certainty that there would be a terminal crisis of Capitalism in the near future -- all these beliefs had to face disconfirming material reality many times over, month in, month out, decade after decade....
Naturally, the wide disparity between theory and reality here -- which is more like a yawning gap of Grand Canyon proportions -- requires an explanation of some sort. If 'underlying reality' differed so markedly from 'appearances', then a theory that bases itself precisely on this premise -- which held that a surface view of reality is misleading and that underlying 'essence' is in fact the opposite of what merely 'seems to be' -- would immediately appeal to anyone subject to such long-term disappointment and demoralisation. And this would be all the more true of those who, because of their education and socialisation, had ruling-ideas already planted in their heads, and which therefore also predisposed them to think this way about high theory and low appearances.
Nevertheless, an explanation for failure and defeat is one thing, but the enormity of repeated set-backs like these, as they unfolded, required something a little stronger: an industrial strength palliative. Constantly dashed hopes would call for something far more soothing and consoling, something absolutely reassuring. Those subject to permanent disappointment would need a concentrated dose of a potent narcoleptic -- Dialectical Methadone --, a powerful ideological hit provided by a doctrine based on the supposed 'contradiction' between 'appearance and reality'. [I have shown how spurious this ancient, ruling-class distinction is, and that not even science is based on it, despite what many say, here.]
Just like any other opiate, this one prevents DM-fans from assessing their own parlous ideological and theoretical condition and then kick the habit.
As Max Eastman pointed out:
"Hegelism is like a mental disease -- you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]
In this way, and to change the image, the gravitational pull of the Black Whole of Hegelian Idealism becomes irresistible --, indeed, as Hegel himself foresaw:
"Every philosophy is essentially an idealism or at least has idealism for its principle, and the question then is only how far this principle is carried out." [Hegel (1999), pp.154-55; §316.]
How else are we to account for Engels's own 're-discovery' of dialectics later in life, after a brief youthful dalliance and subsequent rejection of it in the 1840s (alongside Marx)? [I have explained more about the course of Engels's intellectual decline, below.] How else can we make sense of an analogous course taken by Lenin and Trotsky?
Admittedly, it isn't easy for Dialectical Marxists to accept this depiction of the founders of our movement in view of the almost god-like stature these luminaries have assumed over the years. That, of course, is part of the problem! It prevents revolutionaries thinking for themselves, 'outside the box', as it were, lest they are branded "Revisionists!", or traitors to the cause (or even accused of 'not being a Marxist'). This helps guarantee that they, too, put a slavish adherence to tradition ahead of the search for truth and understanding.
Nevertheless, this goes some way toward explaining Engels's drift back into Hegelian Idealism later in life. In his case, it accounts for his use of Hegel's obscure concepts as a "master key" to unlock nature's underlying secrets, which supposedly govern all of material reality for all of time, even while he denied he was doing just that!
This also helps account for the fact that subsequent generations of revolutionaries have uncritically accepted a demonstrably, if not lamentably, weak theory, one that has presided over decade after decade of failure, and one they can't explain (even to one another!) without using obscure gobbledygook.
These theorists and these activists have consistently displayed a level of philosophical gullibility that is impossible to explain in any other way -- especially in view of the fact that elsewhere they think and behave like hard-headed materialists --, except we appeal to extra-logical factors, such as their class origin and their need for some form of consolation in the face of long-term failure.
Since these comrades were, and still are, subject to the sorts of pressures that weigh upon ordinary human beings (in addition to those created by continually dashed hopes), the need to invert material and social reality to fit an Ideal image they have of it clearly was, and still is, irresistible. Decades of defeat and set-back, the almost total failure to win over even a significant minority of the toiling masses, compounded by splits, betrayals, back-stabbing, sectarian in-fighting, and bureaucratic inertia, further compounded by the implacable opposition of the class enemy -- to say nothing of the other alienating forces at work in capitalist society -- all these have taken (and are still taking) their toll on generations of the very best or our fellow comrades.
The almost universally irrational and emotional response which these Essays (and my ideas in general) elicit from Dialectical Marxists is further testimony to that fact.
[Again, please note, I am not complaining; I expect this level of abuse, opposition, and vitriol -- even indifference. If I didn't receive it, or wasn't subject to it, I would immediately conclude I had gone wrong somewhere!]
DM has comrades like this in its grip because, given their material and social circumstances, it encapsulates the way they were socialised to see the world -- that is, as ultimately Ideal. As children, reared in bourgeois or petty-bourgeois households and benefiting from a 'superior education', they were indoctrinated to believe that there is an invisible world underlying 'appearances' that is more real than the universe we see around us, and which is accessible to thought alone -- which represents a core set of ideas accepted by the vast majority of religions and traditional philosophies. In this way, they had "ruling ideas" installed in their brains almost from the cradle on upwards --, which they later brought with them into the workers' movement. Hence, given their socialisation, petty-bourgeois dialecticians 'naturally' concluded there is absolutely nothing wrong with traditional forms of a priori thesis-mongering. In fact, given this background, nothing else would count as 'genuine Philosophy', since, as noted above, this orientation toward High Theory has been a key feature of 'Western' and 'Eastern' thought for nigh on 2500 years. This approach has such a grip on those held in its thrall that it is literally impossible to shake them free of it -- as Lenin inadvertently admitted, and as Marx himself pointed out....
This means that DM-theorists find they can't abandon -- they can't even bring themselves to contemplate abandoning -- the fixed belief that Marxism needs a philosophy of some sort and react with genuine shock, amazement and horror at anyone who might suggest otherwise. Indeed, they tend to defend this traditional approach to 'knowledge' with no little vehemence, waxing indignant (often becoming abusive) toward anyone who thinks to question it. [Here is just the latest batch of examples, in the comments section.]
As noted in Essay Two, Traditional Thought finds its most avid fans, its most resolute and emotional defenders among those who claim to be inveterate radicals.
Another neat unity of 'opposites' for readers to ponder.
[This topic will be explored at greater length in Essays Three Part Six, Twelve Part One, and Fourteen Part Two, where the usual rationalisations dialecticians offer in order to explain why they still think Marxism needs a philosophy (despite Marx's trenchant criticisms) will be examined and then neutralised.]
Small wonder then that revolutionaries seek reassurance in the comforting idea that the most fundamental 'Laws' of 'Being' -- or, in the case of HCDs, the 'laws of history' -- are on the side of, or they are strongly pre-disposed toward, their cause. Once made, this is an ideological commitment to which such comrades desperately cling; few want to sever the cord that binds them to their Dialectical Mother.
An emotive response is, of course, predictable from Cognitive Dissonance theory. [On this, see the classical account in Festinger (1962), and Festinger, et al (1956). See also Travis and Aronson (2008). There is a useful summary here. See also here, which illustrates perhaps why so many comrades readily follow, and rationalise, the 'Party Line'.]
This unhealthy syndrome was dramatised a few years ago in a 'true-to-life' film, Promised A Miracle (1988), which told the story of an evangelical couple who believed their diabetic son could be cured by faith alone, and hence they rejected medical attention and treatment. These two unfortunates clung to this belief even as their son was obviously dying. They accounted for his apparently worsening condition by reasoning that the 'Devil' was falsely creating certain symptoms in the child to test their faith. So, for them, too, 'appearances' were deceptive! Their 'ability' to access an invisible world lying behind these untrustworthy 'appearances' enabled them to see what was essentially happening, in a world hidden from the eyes of the benighted majority.
Even after their son had passed away, they continued to believe he would come back to them on the fourth day (reprising the return of Lazarus). The more their beliefs were shown to be mistaken, the more powerfully they believed the opposite. In this case, their minds were clearly in the grip of a deleterious form of Christian Mysticism, which convinced them to believe the opposite of what their eyes were telling them.
Dialectical Marxists likewise rely on a different but no less pernicious version of the same opiate -- which, unsurprisingly, is based on Hegel's brand of Christian and Hermetic Mysticism (upside down, or the 'right way up').
Update 12/05/19: CNN has just shown a documentary about the fall of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. They reported that ISIS fighters were expecting 'divine intervention' to save them from defeat, and one of their reporters interviewed some of the civilians who had escaped from the destruction. One woman explained their defeat by saying 'God' was "testing [their] faith", and that in the end 'He' will bring destruction on the 'infidels'. Others said that despite these set-backs, one day the world will be ruled by Islam.
So, this condition isn't confined to Christians and fans-of-the-'dialectic'.
In connection with the vehemently negative (if not arrogantly dismissive) attitude dialecticians almost invariably display toward any comrade who criticises or rejects DM, it is also worth consulting the work of Milton Rokeach on "Open and Closed Minds" (which was itself partly based on Adorno's Authoritarian Personality -- i.e., Adorno (1994)); cf., Rokeach (1960), and Lalich (2004).]
[End of this Note.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
As Rees pointed out:
"...[D]efeat magnifies every tactical disagreement, forcing revolutionaries to derive fresh strategies from a re-examination of the fundamentals of Marxism.... Lenin was right to highlight the link between Bogdanov's adoption of idealism and his failure to react correctly to the downturn in the level of the struggle in Russia." [Rees (1998), pp.173-79.]
It is no surprise, therefore, to find that most (if not all) of Engels's work on the foundations of DM was written in the post 1860s downturn, after the massive struggles for the vote in the UK before the Reform Act of 1867, following on the demise of the Chartist Movement and then after the Paris Commune had been defeated in 1871.4
Similarly, Lenin's philosophical/dialectical writings were largely confined to the period after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, and before the short-lived successes of 1917.
Trotsky's dialectical commentaries (including his Notebooks and his wrangles with Burnham) date largely from the 1930s, after the major reverses that took place in the post 1917-1926 period in Europe and internationally, in China, then subsequently in Spain, following upon his own isolation and political quarantine later in that decade. He had shown very little interest in such matters before then.5
Indeed, Trotsky admitted as much in his 1935 Diary:
"It's been about two weeks since I have written much of anything: it's too difficult. I read newspapers. French novels. Wittel's book about Freud (a bad book by an envious pupil), etc. Today I wrote a little about the interrelationship between the physiological determinism of brain processes and the 'autonomy' of thought, which is subject to the laws of logic. My philosophical interests have been growing during the last few years, but alas, my knowledge is too insufficient, and too little time remains for a big and serious work...." [Trotsky (1958), p.109. Bold emphasis added.]
As should seem obvious from the above: (i) Trotsky's interest in philosophy coincided with the period of his political quarantine, and (ii) He admits he had paid little attention to it before.
Stalin, too, only became obsessed with dialectics after the defeat of the Deborinites post-1929, and after the failure of the Chinese and German revolutions (although he had written about this theory in 1901). Likewise, Mao himself 'discovered' a fondness for this Hermetic creed after the crushing defeats of the mid-1920s.6
More recently, the obsessive devotion shown by OTs toward the minutiae of DM follows a similar pattern: (a) OTs invariably adopt a catastrophist view of everything that happens (or is ever likely to happen) in capitalist society, and (b) OT parties are constantly splitting, hence they face semi-permanent disappointment and demoralisation. Naturally, relentless disillusion requires regular, concentrated doses of highly potent DM-opiates. To take just one example: an OT of the stature of Ted Grant (along with Alan Woods) only 're-discovered' hardcore DM after his party had booted him out, which expulsion itself followed upon the catastrophic collapse of the Militant Tendency in the late 1980s -- this turn toward mystical forms of consolation materialised in the shape of that ill-advised, poorly argued and badly researched book, RIRE.7
[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; NOT = Non-Orthodox Trotskyist; RIRE = Reason In Revolt, i.e., Woods and Grant (1995/2007); TAR = The Algebra of Revolution, i.e., Rees (1998).]
This regressive doctrine doesn't just afflict OTs, NOTs show similar but less chronic signs of dialectical debilitation.
For example, the overt use of DM-concepts by leading figures in the UK-SWP (a NOT-style party) only began in earnest after the downturn in the class struggle in the late 1970s, and more specifically following upon the defeat of the National Union of Miners in 1985. In this respect, therefore, TAR itself represents perhaps the high-water mark of this latest retreat into consolation by UK-SWP theorists. [That was written before John Rees, TAR's author, resigned from the SWP!] The fact that this newfound interest in DM has nothing to do with theoretical innovation (and everything to do with repetition, reassurance, and consolation) can be seen from the additional fact that TAR adds nothing new to the debate (about 'dialectics'), it merely repeats significant parts of it, albeit from a different perspective -- for the gazillionth time. So much for re-examining the basics!8
[I have added much more detail concerning the UK-SWP's turn to mysticism to Note 8.]
Given the overwhelming experience of defeat, debacle, disaster, and retreat that the international labour movement and the revolutionary tradition have together endured over the last 150 years, these correlations are quite striking (even if they aren't the least bit surprising) -- for all that no one seems to have noticed them before!9 ....
Reality 'Contradicts Appearances'
Alongside this there has emerged a correspondingly robust refusal to face up to reality. In my experience, this ostrich-like characteristic is found most glaringly among OTs -- perhaps because Trotskyism is by far and away the most unsuccessful and fragmentary wing of mainstream Dialectical Marxism --, but this malady is also represented to varying degrees throughout the rest of the revolutionary and communist movement, with MISTs perhaps winning the Silver Medal in this event.12
[OT = Orthodox Trotskyist; MIST = Maoist Dialectician.]
As already noted, an excellent example of this is the knee-jerk quotation of the phrase "tested in practice" in support of the supposed (but imaginary) universal validity of DM. Even though reality tells a different story, we regularly encounter the following 'whistling in the dark' type of argument:
"There is no final, faultless, criterion for truth which hovers, like god, outside the historical process. Neither is there any privileged scientific method which is not shaped by the contours of the society of which it is a part. All that exists are some theories which are less internally contradictory and have a greater explanatory power…. [I]f the truth is the totality, then it is the totality of working class experience, internationally and historically which gives access to the truth…. [A theory's] validity must be proven by its superior explanatory power -- [which means it is] more internally coherent, more widely applicable, capable of greater empirical verification -- in comparison with its competitors. Indeed, this is a condition of it entering the chain of historical forces as an effective power. It is a condition of it being 'proved in practice.' If it is not superior to other theories in this sense, it will not 'seize the masses,' will not become a material force, will not be realized in practice." [Rees (1998), pp.235-37. Bold emphasis added.]
[More fantastical material like this has been posted here.]
However, Dialectical Marxism -- never mind Dialectical Trotskyism -- has never actually "seized the masses"; except perhaps briefly in Russia, Germany, Italy and France, it has never even got close to lightly hugging them. But this unwelcome fact isn't allowed to "rain on their parade" or interrupt the reverie. So, this inconvenient aspect of reality is simply inverted and the opposite idea is left standing on its feet (as, indeed, the above passage amply confirms) -- or, alternatively, it is simply ignored.
Failing that, of course, the happy day when DM finally manages to captivate the masses is projected way off into the future where it becomes a safe 'fact', insulated from easy refutation.
Of course, beyond blaming the mass of the population for their own failure to appreciate this wondrous theory -- a rhetorical tactic beloved, for example, of Stalinists and Maoists, who tell us the ungrateful masses need a 'Great Teacher' to set them straight --, few DM-fans have ever paused to wonder why the overwhelming majority of workers/human beings stubbornly remain locked in 'un-seized' mode, so deep in the sand has this collective, Hegelianised brain now been wedged.
Since DM is regarded as the very epitome of scientific and economic knowledge (a veritable "Algebra of Revolution", if you will), the fault can't lie with this theory (perish the thought!), so the 'problem' must be located elsewhere. The 'solution' is, apparently, staring us in the face: why, the masses themselves are to blame! They have been gripped by "false consciousness", trapped in a world dominated by "formal thinking". "Static" language and "fixed categories" dominate their lives, this sorry state of affairs further compounded by the "banalities of commonsense". Indeed, they have been seduced by "commodity fetishism", or have been bought off by imperialist "super-profits".
Material reality is once more inverted so that a comforting idea is allowed to remain on its feet. Only a vanishingly small fraction of humanity has ever 'seen the light'; the vast majority of working people are hopelessly lost, staggering around in stygian gloom --, this peremptory verdict itself justified by a theory that not one of its acolytes can actually explain, even to each other!
Such is the deleterious effect on Dialectical Marxists of a diet rich in Silicates.
Figure Two: The DM-Guide To Clarity-Of-Thought,
A Diet High In Silicates
Naturally, this means that dialectics must be brought to the masses "from the outside", whether they like it or not. Up to present, however, the signs are that this has been a clear and consistent "Not!"
But, the conclusion is never drawn -- it doesn't even make the edge of the radar screen -- that workers will never accept a theory that clashes with their materially-, and socially-grounded language, and which is counter to their understanding and experience -- or which, because of this, isn't even a materialist theory!
At this point it could be countered that in a revolutionary upheaval daily experience and commonsense aren't sure and safe guides to action. Hence, a revolutionary party needs a theory that not only transcends the immediate, but has been tested in practice.
And yet, HM (i.e., with every trace of Hegel excised along lines suggested here) has provided, and still provides us with just such a theory. Even better: its concepts clash neither with the vernacular nor with common understanding. Quite the contrary, as we saw in Part One of this Essay, HM actually depends on both!
On the other hand, and with respect to concepts drawn from DM, the proffered rejoinder in the last but one paragraph is as misguided as any could be. As Part One of this Essay has also shown, not one single thesis drawn from DM relates to anything a human being, let alone a worker, or even a Marxist, could experience. So, this isn't to put workers down. Not even those who invented this theory, or those who now disseminate it, understand it. [Again, that was established in Part One.] In that case, it can't be an expression of the party's practice; nor can it be, or have been, tested in practice (as we will see). Moreover, as Essays Twelve Part One, and subsequent Parts of Essay Twelve (summary here) and Fourteen Part One (summary here) show, DM is based on concepts derived from over two millennia of deeply entrenched, ruling-class ideology.
Given its origin in Mystical Christianity, it is no big surprise that DM fails to mesh with material reality, and hence that it can't be used to help change it. Still less surprising is the fact that it has failed us for so long.
Nor, it seems, has anyone even considered the effect that DM has had on the standing of revolutionaries in the eyes of ordinary workers, or on their respect for Marxism itself, whose parties are now widely regarded as little more than a standing joke, comprised of nothing but warring sects dominated by obscure and irrelevant ideas....
Still less thought has gone into the extent to which this 'theory' (with its egregious logic) has only succeeded in undermining the reputation of HM viewed as a science, just as precious little attention has been paid to the fatally-compromised credibility of anyone who accepts DM.
Well, would you listen to, or even respect, the opinions of anyone who accepts the theoretical equivalent of Astrology or Crystal Gazing?
However, as noted in the Introduction, revolutionaries are unlikely to abandon DM in spite of the noxious effect it has had on their own thought, let alone their own movement --, or even in the face of the steady blows that yours truly rains down upon it.
Whether or not DM actually spells the Death of Marxism is obviously of no concern to those held in its thrall, which is why many who might have made it this far will reject much of what this Essay has said, and will read no further.
This is once more hardly surprising: it is difficult to see clearly with your head stuck in what is perhaps the psychological equivalent of the Gobi Desert.
The "Opiate" Of The Party
It has been maintained above that DM appeals to, and hence satisfies, the contingent psychological needs of certain sections of the revolutionary movement, comrades who, because of their class origin, class position, or their socialisation, and in response to the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism cling to DM cling to DM in a way that makes a drowning man look positively indifferent toward any straws that might randomly drift past him.
[Any who doubt this should try 'debating' with comrades who are held in thrall to this theory. And good luck! You'll need it. (On that, see here.)]
As noted earlier, that is because dialectics is a source of consolation analogous to the solace religion provides believers. That is, while DM supplies its acolytes with consolation in the face of dashed hopes and unrealised expectations, it also provides them with a defence against the acid of disillusion by re-configuring each defeat as its opposite.
For example, in relation to the 2012-2013 crisis in the UK-SWP, this is what Mark Steel had to say:
"SWP members who have taken a stand on the current issue seem bewildered as to why their leaders behave in this illogical way. But the reason may be that the debate isn't really about the allegations, or attitudes towards feminism, it's about accepting that you do as you're told, that the party is under attack at all times so you defend the leaders no matter what, that if the party's pronouncement doesn't match reality, it must be reality that's wrong. Dissent on an issue and your crime is not to be wrong about the issue, it's that you dissented at all." [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
As we will see, DM plays a key role in this regard, since it teaches the faithful that reality contradicts the way the world appears to be to those not 'in the know'.
This is worryingly similar to the way that theists manage to persuade themselves that, despite appearances to the contrary, death, disease and suffering are not only beneficial, they actually confirm 'the goodness of God'! Both clearly provide believers with a convenient excuse for refusing to face the facts.13
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
From Note 13:
Admittedly, this isn't the first time this particular accusation has been levelled against Marxist revolutionaries. However, on this occasion it is worth mentioning the following significant differences:
(1) It is being claimed here that only DM (not HM) functions in this way.
(2) Dialectical Marxism isn't a religion; it merely operates in a way that makes it analogous to one. Just as religious alienation finds theoretical expression in Theology, so revolutionary political alienation finds it in DM.
(3) There are other respects in which DM is analogous to Theology: (a) Both depend on, or utilise, metaphysical theories; (b) Both propound and cling to dogma that none may question, but which no one can actually explain; (c) Both possess Doctors of Divinity/Dialectics who not only help preserve and guard the faith, but who are also skilled at complex sectarian/casuistical disputation; (d) Both offer their acolytes some form of consolation; (e) Both dull the critical faculties by the use of robotic mantra; (f) Both have their sacred books; (g) Both have their 'saints'.
(4) These accusations aren't being advanced by an enemy of Marxism, but by a fellow Marxist who harbours serious doubts about the influence such ruling-class ideas have had on our movement, which will only help guarantee that the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism will extend into this new century -- perhaps beyond, if humanity survives that long. The aim of this critique isn't, therefore, to rubbish Marxism, but to help make it more successful -- or, at least, just successful.
However, since religious belief will only disappear when its social, economic and political roots no longer exist, the hold this Hermetic creed has on the majority of dialectically-distracted comrades will only relent when the working-class succeed in changing society for them, thus saving DM-fans from themselves. Dialecticians will therefore have to be rescued from this mystical fog by a successful workers' revolution. They have shown they are incapable of this simple act.
My Essays can no more do this than we can hope to argue the god-botherers of this world out of their faith. This means that, just like religionists, dialecticians will require a very real, materialist cure -- not an Ideal one -- provided by the revolutionary proletariat. So, these Essays will only make sense to such comrades when the Owl of Minerva has finally been shot, plucked and then stuffed by a workers' militia -- if and when that happens.
Nothing short of this will bring an end to the alienation that induces comrades to lose themselves in dialectical daydreams. Of course, if the above revolution never happens, dialectical mystics will doubtless continue to perfect their ostrich impressions right up until the point where the planet finally sinks into barbarism. These Essays won't shift them in the least, for such comrades cling to dialectics for non-rational reasons. [On that, see here, here, here, and Note 13a2.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
In other words, DM is the "opiate" of the Party, the heart of a seemingly hopeless cause.13a00
For those Dialectical Marxists who live in a world divorced from the day-to-day life and struggles of ordinary workers -- i.e., for professional revolutionaries, academics and itinerant theorists, who aren't employed in the world of work alongside workers --, HM clearly isn't fundamental enough. In fact, these individuals -- who, for whatever reason, are cut-off from the world of collective labour -- clearly require their own distinctive world-view, or 'dialectical explanation' of the economy, expressed in and by a theory, or 'method', that has itself been abstracted (cut-off) from the world of 'appearances', and thus from material reality itself.
This 'world-view'/'method' must incorporate an explanation that adequately represents the (now) alienated experience of these erstwhile 'radicals'; it must not only be divorced from ordinary language and common understanding, it must be distanced from working class experience and hence from genuinely materialist forms-of-thought. In addition, it must help rationalise, justify, and promote the pre-eminent organisational and theoretical position DM-theorists have arrogated to themselves -- that is, it must ratify their status as 'leaders of the movement and the class'.
To that end, it must be a 'theory'/'method' that only they are capable of "understanding" -- or so they have convinced themselves.
[To save the reader's annoyance, I will henceforth drop the phrase "theory"/"method" and just use "theory" instead. Readers should, however, understand I mean both.]
Even then, they must be able to employ this theory to 'prove' that members of other Marxist groups either (i) Don't "understand" dialectics or (ii) They misuse and/or distort it. [On that, see below.]
What better theory is there then that fits the bill than one that is based on an incomprehensible set of ideas Hegel concocted in the comfort of his own head (upside down or 'the right way up')?
DM is thus beyond workers' experience (indeed, anyone's experience) -- not by accident -- but because it is meant to be that way.13a0
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
From Note 13a0:
This might sound rather Machiavellian, and in some sense it is. Nevertheless, anyone who finds this comment unacceptable is encouraged to shelve those qualms until later on in this Essay, where it will be fully substantiated.
[It is also worth pointing out that the basis for advancing allegations like this was established in Essay Nine Part One.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
Naturally, this not only renders DM immune from refutation, it also transforms it into an ideal intellectual device for getting things the wrong way round (or, indeed, upside down). It is thus an ideal tool for keeping 'reality' Ideal. As an added bonus, this 'theory' helps insulate militant minds from the defeats and setbacks revolutionaries constantly face -- just as it inures them to the dire consequences of the theory itself (some of which have been detailed below).
DM isn't just the opiate of the party, it expresses the very soul of professional revolutionaries. Abstracted not just from the class, but also from humanity itself, this faction within the labour movement naturally finds abstraction conducive to (a) The way it sees the natural and social world, and (b) The way it views the working class itself -- that is, as an abstract object of theory, not a very real subject of history....
Moreover, it also exposes the motivating factors that underpin the belief that DM is the "world-view" of the proletariat -- plainly, such proletarians aren't real workers they are members of an abstract class of 'workers' kept at arms length by a set of dogmas only the terminally naive or the psychologically challenged among them would swallow!13a01
Of course, that also helps account for Dialectical Marxism's long-term lack of impact on workers themselves....
The Indoctrination And 'Conversion' Of Marxist Dialecticians
"Professional Revolutionaries"
It is important to point out that the ideas I am about to rehearse in this sub-section:
A) Bear no relation to those advanced by the anarchist, Jan Machajski. I am not arguing that 'intellectuals' are at every level automatic and implacable enemies of the working class -- or even that workers are only interested in economic struggle -- just that 'intellectuals' can no more escape the class forces that shaped them than workers can. [On this, see also Note 3, where I attempt to supply some of the theoretical background to this line-of-thought. On Machajski, see here (second section).]
B) Share nothing with the myth invented and propagated by 'Leninologists', summed up by Hal Draper:
"According to the myth, endlessly repeated from book to book, Lenin's 'concept of the party':
"(1) saw the party as consisting mainly of 'intellectuals,' on the basis of a theory according to which workers cannot themselves develop to socialist consciousness; rather, the socialist idea is always and inevitably imported into the movement by bourgeois intellectuals;
"(2) posited that the party is simply a band of 'professional revolutionaries' as distinct from a broad working-class party;
"(3) repudiated any element of spontaneity or spontaneous movement, in favour of engineered revolution only;
"(4) required that the party be organized not democratically but as a bureaucratic or semi-military hierarchy." [Draper (1999), pp.187-88. Formatting adjusted to agree with the conventions adopted at this site. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
My case (here summarised) is as follows:
[1] The party should ideally consist of socialist workers and 'intellectuals' (as well as others less easy to categorise separately). However, 'intellectuals' (petty-bourgeois and déclassé) have not only shaped our core ideas, they have led the movement for over a century. In and of itself this isn't a problem. What is problematic is their importation of ruling-class ideas into our movement; these non-working class 'intellectuals' have appropriated thought-forms derived from the very worst forms of Christian and Hermetic Mysticism.
Workers themselves can and have formed socialist ideas. However, as we have seen throughout this site, DM has nothing to do with socialism, so the admission that workers are capable of developing such ideas doesn't imply they have also formed ideas that are unique to DM. [This was covered in detail in Part One.]
[2] There are "professional revolutionaries" in the party -- but, as Draper notes:
"It can easily be shown, from Lenin's copious discussions of the professional revolutionary for years after WITBD [i.e., Lenin (1947) -- RL], that to Lenin the term meant this: a party activist who devoted most (preferably all) of his spare time to revolutionary work." [Draper (1999), p.193. Italic emphasis in the original.]
However, it is also clear that a layer in the above class of "professionals" is also composed of "full-timers", "party functionaries", and petty-bourgeois or de-classé 'intellectuals'. Draper was concerned to repudiate the myth that the party was formed only of 'intellectuals', full-timers and functionaries. Of course, these three groups can and do overlap.
"The point of defining a professional revolutionary as a full-timer, a functionary, is to fake the conclusion, or 'deduction': only non-workers can make up the party elite, hence only intellectuals (sic). This conclusion is an invention of the Leninologists, based on nothing in Lenin." [Ibid., p.193. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[Point (3) above lies beyond the scope and aims of this site; (4) will be discussed throughout the rest of this Essay.]
The Role Of The Individual In History -- Pawns Or Agents?
[This sub-section isn't aimed at solving the knotty problem of the role of the individual in history, merely raise questions about the nature of petty-bourgeois individualism and how it has affected revolutionary socialism.]
'Freedom' Versus 'Determinism'
The mind-set mentioned in the previous main section is intimately connected with:
(i) The way that prominent revolutionaries -- or those who have shaped Marxist theory -- were socialised in and by bourgeois society long before they had even heard of Marxism, and,
(ii) How this affects their subsequent theoretical, political, and organisational development.
The rest of this Essay will expand on each of these issues, among several others....13a1
[Added on Edit: I then discuss the role of the individual in history, which material I have omitted. In the sub-section after that, reproduced below, I enter into the class nature of those who invented 'Marxist Dialectics' alongside Lenin and Kautsky's criticisms of 'intellectuals', who are largely responsible for developing and disseminating the academic form of this pernicious theory.]
Revolutionaries -- Recruited As Individuals
[Readers should not assume that the argument presented in this section, or even the rest of this Essay, in any way supports, condones or agrees with the caricature of Lenin's views expressed in What Is To Be Done? [WITBD] (On that, see Part One of this Essay.) When I speak about ideas brought into the movement from the "outside", I am, of course, referring to ruling-class doctrines imported into the movement by leading Marxists, which later coalesced to form DM. I am not speaking about 'revolutionary consciousness'!]
This now brings us to a consideration of the factors that define and shape the mind-set, role and status of leading Marxists as well as that of HCDs. Unlike most workers who finally become revolutionaries, the vast majority of 'professional revolutionaries' (and all of the leading revolutionaries, as well as Marxist 'intellectuals') join, or have be recruited into the revolutionary socialist movement as a result of one or more of the following 'subjective' factors:
(i) Their own personal or intellectual commitment to the revolution (for whatever reason),
(ii) Their 'rebellious' personality (howsoever that phrase is understood),
(iii) Their alienation from the system,
(iv) Other contingent psychological or social motivating factors (for example, in Lenin's case, the execution of his brother, Aleksandr) --, but, significantly,
(v) Not as a direct result of their (collective) involvement in the class war.
As US-SWP honcho, James Cannon, conceded:
"We begin to recruit from sources none too healthy…. Freaks always looking for the most extreme expression of radicalism, misfits, windbags, chronic oppositionists, who had been thrown out of half a dozen organizations…. Many people came to us who had revolted against the Communist Party not for its bad sides but for its good sides; that is, the discipline of the party, the subordination of the individual to the decisions of the party in current work. A lot of dillettantish, petty-bourgeois minded people who couldn't stand any kind of discipline, many of the newcomers made a fetish of democracy…. All the people of this type have one common characteristic; they like to discuss things without limit or end…. They can all talk; and not only can but will; and everlastingly, on every question." [James P. Cannon, History of American Trotskyism, pp.92-93, quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
[Items (i)-(iv) above might appear to be 'subjective factors', but in view of what was argued in the previous sub-section [which has been left out], and what James Cannon has just admitted, this is no mere appearance: they are subjective. Readers are referred to that sub-section or more details.]
Trotsky underlined point (v) rather succinctly:
"A worker comes to socialism as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass, which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined, even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class movement. Today every newcomer finds, in the Western European countries, the colossal structure of working-class democracy already existing." [The Intelligentsia and Socialism, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]
These individuals become revolutionaries through their own efforts, or they do so under the influence of someone else (a parent, partner, sibling, friend, teacher, author, or even another revolutionary), but not (in general) through participation in collective action, in strikes (etc.), at their own place of work -- that is, if they work.
Of course, Trotsky was here speaking about 'intellectuals', but his comments also apply to most individuals who drift into the movement -- that is, those that aren't workers and who don't join as a result of a direct involvement the class war. In which case, if these individuals aren't, or weren't, members of the working class, they can't come "to socialism as a part of a whole, along with [their] class", whether or not they are 'intellectuals'. Not everyone outwith the working class is an 'intellectual', but both 'groups' (the 'intellectuals' and the 'non-intellectuals') still join the movement under the circumstances Trotsky outlined -- and that includes Trotsky himself!
Lenin (quoting Kautsky) added the following thoughts about these 'intellectuals':
"The problem
'that again interests us so keenly today is the antagonism between the intelligentsia and the proletariat. My colleagues' (Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and editor) 'will mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually exists, and, as in other cases, it would be the most inept tactics to try to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it manifests itself in classes, not in individuals. The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may join wholly in the class struggle of the proletariat. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall mainly speak in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
'This antagonism differs however from the antagonism between labour and capital, since the intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his labour power, and he himself is often enough subjected to exploitation and social humiliation by the capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
'...Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter....'" [Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1976a), pp.161-62. Bold emphases alone added. Minor typos corrected -- I have informed the editors over at the Marxist Internet Archive. Another version of Kautsky's comments can be found here. I have used the Peking edition in this Essay, which differs slightly from the on-line Russian version ]
To be sure, Lenin and Kautsky were describing hostile (anti-Marxist) intellectuals, but much of what they had to say also applies to those who move in the opposite direction, and become professional revolutionaries -- as Kautsky himself admits:
"The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may join wholly in the class struggle of the proletariat." [Ibid.]
Except, concerning the above individuals, their 'hostility' toward the proletariat is often latent and lies under the surface (although, from several such individuals we regularly hear words like "workerist", or "economism", and who also spare no effort telling us that ordinary workers are prisoners of "banal commonsense", bought off by "super-profits", and are in thrall to "formal thinking"). However, this latent 'hostility' later exhibits an entirely different set of characteristics; as we will see, this typically, but not exclusively, surfaces as a haughty, arrogant, contemptuous, even impatient attitude toward other revolutionaries and, indeed, workers themselves, which later morphs, under specific social and political conditions, into various forms of substitutionism. It is then that this latent hostility fully surfaces, rationalising and justifying (even ignoring or explaining away) the continued oppression and exploitation of workers -- as we saw, for example, in those "already existing socialist" states (now defunct), and maintained in those states that still claim they are socialist/communist. We witnessed this, too, as generations of Marxist 'intellectuals' ('east' and 'west') rationalised, supported, or advocated the "revolutionary defence" of those anti-worker and oppressive regimes. Of course, this wasn't/isn't the case with every such Marxist 'intellectual' or 'professional revolutionary', but their class origin or current class position can't fail to have affected their view of, and attitude toward, workers and fellow revolutionaries in general.
Indeed, as we will see as this Essay unfolds.
This conclusion is forced on us unless we choose to regard such 'individuals' as 'saints', who exist above, or are far removed from, the pressures that every other human being experiences living in class society. Any who cavil at this point might be tempted to conclude that they alone perhaps -- unique in all of humanity in the last five or ten thousand years -- they alone are capable of rising above such mundane and prosaic forces, and are able to do so against the pull of social gravity.
So, Lenin and Kautsky's class analysis also applies to Lenin and Kautsky, as well as other petty-bourgeois, or déclassé, Dialectical Marxists. Again, this must be the case otherwise we would have to conclude that Lenin and Kautsky were committed to an Idealist theory on this issue. That is, they would be trying to account for the theories, ideas and attitudes adopted by 'intellectuals', petty-bourgeois, or déclassé Dialectical Marxists on the basis of who they "identified" with -- not on their class origin and current class position --, or even on their psychological orientation toward other classes. Except perhaps: in the case of their attitude to the bourgeoisie this would at least have economic and social roots. With respect to their orientation toward the working class it would have no such implications, just a mind-set based on..., er..., maybe..., lifestyle and latent antagonism:
"Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas." [Ibid.]
But:
"This antagonism differs however from the antagonism between labour and capital, since the intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his labour power." [Ibid.]
If the intellectual isn't part of the capitalist class and has to sell 'his' labour-power just like workers, then the only thing that could possibly swing 'him' behind the bourgeoisie is "his standard of life", or 'his' socialisation. But, it would be interesting to see how many intellectuals enjoy a standard of living on a par with an average member of the capitalist class. Their precarious economic condition would surely make them the Janus Class, as Marx characterised the petty-bourgeoisie, a class fraction that could break either way. [On this, see Draper (1978), pp.288-316.] But, whichever way they finally do break, their socialisation will always predispose them toward the ideas and thought-forms of the ruling-class.
So, Lenin/Kautsky tell us that some 'intellectuals' side with the bourgeoisie, which implies, of course, that others identify with the proletariat -- for example, Marx, Engels and Lenin! But, if Lenin/Kautsky were right, their own ideas wouldn't be a function of their class position as such, they would be the sole function of other ideas they held -- contradicting Marx:
"It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." [Marx (1968), p.181.]
If those who identify with the proletariat and those who don't identify with them originate in, or belong to, the same class faction (i.e., petty-bourgeois or déclassé intellectuals), then the only factor that would distinguish them, that would motivate them into choosing one over the other (bosses or workers), would be the contingent ideas they had adopted or formed, not their class position as such. But, as has been noted several times, those in this class fraction, on both sides of the class war, have already imbibed ideas inherited from previous generations of ruling-class ideologues. While it is undeniable that there are significant differences between Marxist intellectuals and/or "professional revolutionaries", and non-Marxist intellectuals, because they both come from, or now belong to, the same class faction, they are still either petty-bourgeois or they are déclassé -- and, to repeat, they share the same range of ruling-class ideas.
Plainly, their attitudes and beliefs can't change the class to which they belong, or from which they have emerged. So, there remain far more basic ideological similarities between those who break either way (again, with the capitalist class or with the working class) than there are differences -- especially since both halves of this class fraction have had ruling-class ideas forced down their throats almost from day one, and which they subsequently employ in the class war:
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.... In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production." [Marx (1968), pp.181-82. Bold emphasis added.]
[It could be agued that if the above were correct, then it would imply that workers themselves can use philosophy to help fight their corner in the class war. I have dealt with that riposte in Part One, here.]
The above applies no less to Marxist intellectuals; the only factors that distinguish them from those who do not 'side with the revolution' are those that were mentioned earlier, and in the previous sub-section [again, that sub-section has been omitted]. Although the ideas held by both sets of individuals originated outside the working class, subjective factors finally determine the side with which they subsequently identify -- which is what one would expect of those who are quintessential 'individuals' and who religiously defend their individuality:
"A worker comes to socialism as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass, which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined, even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class movement." [Trotsky, op cit; bold emphases added.]
"He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter...." [Kautsky, op cit; bold emphases added.]
[There is more on this later, where I deal with the clichéd rebuttal that this is just 'crude reductionism'.]
So, and once more, such comrades enter the movement committed to the revolution as an Idea, as an expression of their own personal and intellectual integrity -- maybe also because of anger directed against the system (for whatever reason), or their idiosyncratic alienation from class society (again, for whatever reason). However, and once more, they aren't revolutionaries for proletarian or materialist reasons; that is, they don't side with the proletariat as a result of a direct or immediate experience of collective action, or as a direct consequence of working class response to exploitation --, but for individual, albeit often very noble, reasons.
This means that from the beginning (again, by-and-large), because of their class position and non-working class origin and upbringing, they act and think like individuals (indeed, as Trotsky noted, and Lenin implied). This now (i) Affects any new ideas they are capable of forming, as well as and the inferences they are capable of making, (ii) Colours their attitude toward such ideas, (iii) Skews their activity inside the movement, and (iv) Slants the relationships they develop with other revolutionaries and with workers themselves.
This isn't to malign such individuals, but to remind us that this is a class issue -- again, as Lenin/Kautsky noted:
"...[I]t relates to classes, not to individuals." [Loc cit.]
Although this is indeed a class issue, it affects how those caught up in revolutionary politics behave as individuals. How else could class influences be expressed?
As noted above, these individuals have had their heads filled with "ruling ideas" almost from the day they left the cradle -- which indoctrination was itself a direct result of the 'superior' education and the bourgeois/petty-bourgeois socialisation to which they had been subjected. So, when those who might later 'side with the revolution' encounter Hegel's work (or even DM), it seems quite 'natural' for them to latch on to his (and its) dogmatic and a priori theses -- most important of which is that change is part of the cosmic order (when, as we now know, and quite fittingly, that that is the opposite of the truth). "Natural" in the sense that their class origin and current position has already delivered them up as atomised, socially-isolated individuals with no collective identity, just as Lenin and Trotsky argued. Hence, before they became revolutionaries, or even Marxists, they had already been weaned on a diet of ruling-class ideology and forms-of-thought.
This means that Hegel's doctrines (upside down or 'the right way up') mesh seamlessly with ideas they had already internalised even before they encountered them -- another of which is that it is the job of 'genuine' philosophers to use 'abstraction' in order to concoct a priori theories such as these. Marx's famous words, therefore, apply equally well to them:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.'" [Marx and Engels (1970), pp.64-65, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]
Notice how Marx argued that:
"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.... Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age...." [Ibid. Bold emphases added.]
So, they rule also as "thinkers", and this they do in "its whole range". Moreover, those who have no control over the system itself -- which includes every single one of the DM-classicists, as well as those who have led the movement and who have shaped its ideas ever since -- are also "subject" to its vice-like ideological grip. The "ruling intellectual force" can't fail to have affected these 'intellectuals' (Marxist or otherwise).
But, we needn't guess here. Dialecticians openly acknowledge this influence, if not glory in it. [On that, see the next sub-section.]
Moreover, for reasons also outlined in Note 13a2, they are happy to return the 'favour', gladly assisting in the elaboration and dissemination of alien-class forms-of-thought in books and articles on DM, or 'systematic theory' in general --, which is, of course, how and why the ruling-class manage to "control at the same time...the means of mental production", and hence control the ideas promoted and promulgated by Dialectical Marxists themselves.
Naturally, "the means of mental production" have changed markedly since Ancient Greece dominated 'western' thought, but the last fifteen centuries or so (again, in the 'west') saw this hegemony initially coalesce in and around the Roman Catholic Church, in the Monasteries and later the Universities. But, since the Renaissance intellectual control has become increasingly diffuse, spreading its filaments out from the Universities to include itinerant thinkers (those patronised by the rich as well as those with private means). Of late, "the means of mental production" have also enabled the intellectual labour of free-lance and screen writers, journalists, editors, producers, TV, radio, and internet pundits. The livelihood and reputation of those caught up in this are likewise largely dependent on factors highlighted by Lenin/Kautsky:
"[Their] standard of life is bourgeois, and [they] must maintain it if [they are] not to become...pauper[s]; but at the same time [they are] compelled to sell the product of [their] labour, and often [their] labour-power.... [They do] not fight by means of power, but by argument. [Their] weapons are...personal knowledge,...personal ability,...personal convictions. [They] can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for [their] individuality seems to [them] the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that [they submit] to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. [They recognise] the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course [they count themselves] among the latter...." [Op cit.]
Hence, those who later became 'leading revolutionaries' (and who had also been "subject to" the full force of this indoctrination before they became Marxists), have indeed had their thinking shaped by the ideas and thought-forms of the ruling-class.
Indeed, as we have seen -- and are further about to see.
The Ruling-Class Origin Of 'Dialectical Thought'
The above considerations help explain why Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Stalin and Dietzgen (to mention just a few) thought it quite natural and uncontroversial to regard previous (non-working class) thinkers as their precursors, and, indeed, the source of many of the concepts and methods they imported into Dialectical Marxism (for example, the yet-to-be-explained 'process of abstraction'), and hence look to them for inspiration:
"With this assurance Herr Dühring saves himself the trouble of saying anything further about the origin of life, although it might reasonably have been expected that a thinker who had traced the evolution of the world back to its self-equal state, and is so much at home on other celestial bodies, would have known exactly what's what also on this point. For the rest, however, the assurance he gives us is only half right unless it is completed by the Hegelian nodal line of measure relations which has already been mentioned. In spite of all gradualness, the transition from one form of motion to another always remains a leap, a decisive change. This is true of the transition from the mechanics of celestial bodies to that of smaller masses on a particular celestial body; it is equally true of the transition from the mechanics of masses to the mechanics of molecules -- including the forms of motion investigated in physics proper: heat, light, electricity, magnetism. In the same way, the transition from the physics of molecules to the physics of atoms -- chemistry -- in turn involves a decided leap; and this is even more clearly the case in the transition from ordinary chemical action to the chemism of albumen which we call life. Then within the sphere of life the leaps become ever more infrequent and imperceptible. -- Once again, therefore, it is Hegel who has to correct Herr Dühring." [Engels (1976), pp.82-83. Bold emphases added.]
"Marxism is an integral world-outlook. Expressed in a nutshell, it is contemporary materialism, at present the highest stage of the development of that view upon the world whose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece by Democritus, and in part by the Ionian thinkers who preceded that philosopher." [Plekhanov (1908), p.11. Italic emphases in the original; bold emphases and links added.]
"According to Hegel, dialectics is the principle of all life…. [M]an has two qualities: first being alive, and secondly of also being mortal. But on closer examination it turns out that life itself bears in itself the germ of death, and that in general any phenomenon is contradictory, in the sense that it develops out of itself the elements which, sooner or later, will put an end to its existence and will transform it into its opposite. Everything flows, everything changes; and there is no force capable of holding back this constant flux, or arresting its eternal movement. There is no force capable of resisting the dialectics of phenomena….
"At a particular moment a moving body is at a particular spot, but at the same time it is outside it as well because, if it were only in that spot, it would, at least for that moment, become motionless. Every motion is a dialectical process, a living contradiction, and as there is not a single phenomenon of nature in explaining which we do not have in the long run to appeal to motion, we have to agree with Hegel, who said that dialectics is the soul of any scientific cognition. And this applies not only to cognition of nature….
"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…. When you apply the dialectical method to the study of phenomena, you need to remember that forms change eternally in consequence of the 'higher development of their content….' In the words of Engels, Hegel's merit consists in the fact that he was the first to regard all phenomena from the point of view of their development, from the point of view of their origin and destruction…. [M]odern science confirms at every step the idea expressed with such genius by Hegel, that quantity passes into quality….
"[I]t will be understood without difficulty by anyone who is in the least capable of dialectical thinking...[that] quantitative changes, accumulating gradually, lead in the end to changes of quality, and that these changes of quality represent leaps, interruptions in gradualness…. That's how all Nature acts…." [Plekhanov (1956), pp.74-77, 88, 163. Bold emphases alone added; several paragraphs merged. (Unfortunately, the Index page for the copy of this book over at The Marxist Internet Archive has no link to the second half of Chapter Five, but it can be accessed directly here. I have informed the editors of this error. Added June 2015: they have now corrected it!)]
"The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. In the very same way, in Russia, the theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose altogether independently of the spontaneous growth of the working-class movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the development of thought among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia." [Lenin (1947), p.32. Bold emphases added.]
"The history of philosophy and the history of social science show with perfect clarity that there is nothing resembling 'sectarianism' in Marxism, in the sense of its being a hidebound, petrified doctrine, a doctrine which arose away from the high road of the development of world civilisation. On the contrary, the genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His doctrine emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy and socialism.
"The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true. It is comprehensive and harmonious, and provides men with an integral world outlook irreconcilable with any form of superstition, reaction, or defence of bourgeois oppression. It is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced in the nineteenth century, as represented by German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism." [Lenin, Three Sources and Component Parts of Marxism. Bold emphases alone added.]
"Dialectics requires an all-round consideration of relationships in their concrete development…. Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. [It] requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…. [D]ialectical logic holds that 'truth is always concrete, never abstract', as the late Plekhanov liked to say after Hegel." [Lenin (1921), pp.90, 93. Bold emphases added.]
"Hegel brilliantly divined the dialectics of things (phenomena, the world, nature) in the dialectics of concepts…. This aphorism should be expressed more popularly, without the word dialectics: approximately as follows: In the alternation, reciprocal dependence of all notions, in the identity of their opposites, in the transitions of one notion into another, in the eternal change, movement of notions, Hegel brilliantly divined precisely this relation of things to nature…. [W]hat constitutes dialectics?…. [M]utual dependence of notions all without exception…. Every notion occurs in a certain relation, in a certain connection with all the others." [Lenin (1961), pp.196-97. Italic emphases in the original; bold added. Some paragraphs merged.]
"[A]ll bodies change uninterruptedly in size, weight, colour etc. They are never equal to themselves…. [T]he axiom 'A' is equal to 'A' signifies that a thing is equal to itself if it does not change, that is, if it does not exist…. For concepts there also exists 'tolerance' which is established not by formal logic…, but by the dialectical logic issuing from the axiom that everything is always changing…. Hegel in his Logic established a series of laws: change of quantity into quality, development through contradiction, conflict and form, interruption of continuity, change of possibility into inevitability, etc…." [Trotsky (1971), pp.64-66. Bold emphasis added.]
"I should like to make the reader understand what the professors, so far as I know them, have not yet understood, viz., that our intellect is a dialectical instrument, and instrument which reconciles all opposites. The intellect creates unity by means of the variety and comprehends the difference in the equality. Hegel made it clear long ago that there is no either-or, but as well as...." [Dietzgen (1906), p.248. Bold emphasis added.]
This approach isn't confined to the DM-classicists:
"Previous chapters have shown that dialectics has a history which embraces many thousands of years and that it has passed through various stages of development. Disregarding the beginnings of dialectics in Indian and Chinese philosophy, the following main stages can be distinguished: (1) the dialectics of the old Greek philosophers of nature, Heraclitus; (2) the second and higher stage, the dialectics of Plato and Aristotle; (3) Hegelian dialectics; and (4) materialistic dialectics. Dialectics itself has undergone a dialectical development. Heraclitus, representing the first stage, develops the dialectics of one-after-the-other; Plato and Aristotle, representing the second stage, develop the dialectics of one-beside-the-other. The latter is in opposition to the dialectics of the first stage, being its negation. Hegel embraces both preceding stages of development and raises them to a higher stage. He develops the dialectics of the one-after-the-other and the one-beside-the-other, but in an idealistic form; in other words, he develops an historico-idealistic dialectics." [Thalheimer (1936), pp.157-58. Bold emphases added.]
"The integrity, the wholeness, the irrefutable logic and consistency (sic!) of Marxism-Leninism, which are acknowledged even by its opponents (sic!), have been achieved by the application of the unified philosophical dialectical-materialist world outlook and method. Marxism-Leninism cannot properly be understood without its philosophical basis. The philosophy of Marxism-Leninism is a result and the highest stage of the development of world philosophical thought. It has assimilated al that was best ad most progressive in the centuries of development of philosophy...." [Konstantinov (1974), p.15. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged.]
"As the philosophy of the working class, Marxist-Leninist philosophy is the supreme form of materialism, a logical result of the preceding development of philosophical thought through the ages, and of the whole spiritual culture of mankind." [Kharin (1981), p.12. Bold emphasis added.]
"The history of Western philosophy, however, begins not with idealism but with materialism. This asserts...that the material world, known to us and explored by science, is real; that the only real world is the material one; that thoughts, ideas and sensations are the product of matter organised in a certain way (a nervous system and a brain); that thought cannot derive its categories from itself, but only from the objective world which makes itself known to us through our senses.
"The earliest Greek philosophers were known as 'hylozoists' (from the Greek, meaning 'those who believe that matter is alive'). Here we have a long line of heroes who pioneered the development of thought.... What was startlingly new about this way of looking at the world was that it was not religious. In complete contrast to the Egyptians and Babylonians, from whom they had learnt a lot, the Greek thinkers did not resort to gods and goddesses to explain natural phenomena. For the first time, men and women sought to explain the workings of nature purely in terms of nature. This was one of the greatest turning-points in the entire history of human thought....
"Aristotle, the greatest of the Ancient philosophers, can be considered a materialist, although he was not so consistent as the early hylozoists. He made a series of important scientific discoveries which laid the basis for the great achievements of the Alexandrine period of Greek science....
"The predominant philosophical trend of the Renaissance was materialism. In England, this took the form of empiricism, the school of thought that states that all knowledge is derived from the senses. The pioneers of this school were Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704). The materialist school passed from England to France where it acquired a revolutionary content. In the hands of Diderot, Rousseau, Holbach and Helvetius, philosophy became an instrument for criticising all existing society. These great thinkers prepared the way for the revolutionary overthrow of the feudal monarchy in 1789-93....
"Under the impact of the French revolution, the German idealist Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) subjected all previous philosophy to a thorough criticism. Kant made important discoveries not only in philosophy and logic but in science.... In the field of philosophy, Kant's masterpiece The Critique of Pure Reason was the first work to analyse the forms of logic which had remained virtually unchanged since they were first developed by Aristotle. Kant showed the contradictions implicit in many of the most fundamental propositions of philosophy....
"The greatest breakthrough came in the first decades of the 19th century with George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). Hegel was a German idealist, a man of towering intellect, who effectively summed up in his writings the whole history of philosophy.
"Hegel showed that the only way to overcome the 'Antinomies' of Kant was to accept that contradictions actually existed, not only in thought, but in the real world. As an objective idealist, Hegel had no time for the subjective idealist argument that the human mind cannot know the real world. The forms of thought must reflect the objective world as closely as possible. The process of knowledge consist of penetrating ever more deeply into this reality, proceeding from the abstract to the concrete, from the known to the unknown, from the particular to the universal.
"The dialectical method of thinking had played a great role in Antiquity, particularly in the naïve but brilliant aphorisms of Heraclitus (c.500 B.C.), but also in Aristotle and others. It was abandoned in the Middle Ages, when the Church turned Aristotle's formal logic into a lifeless and rigid dogma, and did not re-appear until Kant returned it to a place of honour. However, in Kant the dialectic did not receive an adequate development. It fell to Hegel to bring the science of dialectical thinking to its highest point of development.
"Hegel's greatness is shown by the fact that he alone was prepared to challenge the dominant philosophy of mechanism. The dialectical philosophy of Hegel deals with processes, not isolated events. It deals with things in their life, not their death, in their inter-relations, not isolated, one after the other. This is a startlingly modern and scientific way of looking at the world. Indeed, in many aspects Hegel was far in advance of his time. Yet, despite its many brilliant insights, Hegel's philosophy was ultimately unsatisfactory. Its principal defect was precisely Hegel's idealist standpoint, which prevented him from applying the dialectical method to the real world in a consistently scientific way. Instead of the material world we have the world of the Absolute Idea, where real things, processes and people are replaced by insubstantial shadows. In the words of Frederick Engels, the Hegelian dialectic was the most colossal miscarriage in the whole history of philosophy. Correct ideas are here seen standing on their head. In order to put dialectics on a sound foundation, it was necessary to turn Hegel upside down, to transform idealist dialectics into dialectical materialism. This was the great achievement of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels...." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.40-42; pp.44-46 in the second edition. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added. Italics in the original.]
"This world outlook of Marxism is called dialectical materialism, a philosophy that is the direct descendent of the great Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century but which revolutionized their thinking by introducing a historical dimension. The achievement was scientific materialism enriched with the theory of evolution propounded by G.W.F Hegel. Materialism states that our ideas are a reflection of the material universe that exists independently of any observer. It's dialectical in that it is always in a state of movement, and change. One of the early dialectical philosophers was the Greek Heraclitus, 'the obscure' (535-475 BCE)." [Brad Forrest, quoted from here. Accessed 22/12/2016. Bold emphases added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
[Quotations to the same effect, across the entire spectrum of Dialectical Marxism, can easily be multiplied by at least one order of magnitude -- as is easily confirmed by anyone who has access to as many books and articles on DM as I have -- or who trawls the Internet.]
Notice that according to Lenin DM is "a continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy". Plainly, a "continuation of" isn't a "break from"! Plekhanov also thought that DM represented the "highest stage...whose foundations were laid down in ancient Greece"; again, that isn't a "break from", either. The others I have quoted do not demur. In fact, I have yet to encounter a single DM-theorist who rejects this connection. [If anyone knows of one, please let me know!]
As we will see in Essay Twelve Part One and the rest of Essay Twelve (summary here), there is a clearly identifiable thread running through the many and varied world-views that have been imposed, encouraged, commissioned, or financed by the assorted ruling-classes history has inflicted upon humanity: i.e., that there is a 'hidden world' underlying 'appearances', accessible to thought alone, the nature of which can be derived or inferred from the supposed meaning of a handful of words, or 'concepts', and nothing more. Concerning the most immediate source of 'dialectical thought' in German Idealism we read the following:
"Already with Fichte the idea of the unity of the sciences, of system, was connected with that of finding a reliable starting-point in certainty on which knowledge could be based. Thinkers from Kant onwards were quite convinced that the kind of knowledge which came from experience was not reliable. Empirical knowledge could be subject to error, incomplete, or superseded by further observation or experiment. It would be foolish, therefore, to base the whole of knowledge on something which had been established only empirically. The kind of knowledge which Kant and his followers believed to be the most secure was a priori knowledge, the kind embodied in the laws of Nature. These had been formulated without every occurrence of the Natural phenomenon in question being observed, so they did not summarise empirical information, and yet they held good by necessity for every case; these laws were truly universal in their application." [White (1996), p.29. Bold emphasis added.]
Because of this, Traditional Philosophers were quite happy to impose their theories on the world in a dogmatic and a priori manner -- plainly because these theories relate not to the material world but to this invisible world, a world that is supposedly more real than the physical universe we see around us. That is because this 'hidden world' expresses 'essence', not superficiality, which is reflected by 'appearances'.
Even though the content of these theories has altered with each change in the Mode of Production, their form has remained largely the same for two-and-a-half millennia: philosophical theses derived from words/thought alone, valid for all of space and time, may be imposed on nature and society dogmatically.
Some might object that the above philosophical ideas can't have remained the same for thousands of years, across different Modes of Production; that supposition runs counter to core HM-concepts.
But, we don't argue the same for religious belief. Marx put no time stamp on the following, for example:
"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man -- state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d'honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo." [Marx (1975b), p.244. Italic emphases in the original. Some paragraphs merged.]
The above remarks applied back in Babylon and
the Egypt of the Pharaohs,
just as they did in Ancient China and the rest of Asia, The Americas, Greece,
Rome, and throughout Europe, Africa, Australasia --, as, indeed, they have done right across the planet ever since.
The same is true of the core thought-forms found throughout Traditional
Philosophy -- that there is this invisible world underlying 'appearances', accessible to thought
alone --, especially since Marx also argued that:
"...philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975c), p.381. Bold emphasis added.]
This, of course, helps explain why Marx thought this entire discipline was based on distorted language, and contained little other than empty abstractions and alienated thought-forms -- and, indeed, why he turned his back on it from the late 1840s onward.
In which case, the aforementioned individuals -- who, it is worth recalling, had been educated to view the world precisely this way long before they had ever heard of Marxism --, when they encountered Hegel and DM, readily appropriated these dogmatic ideas. That is because they were looking for 'logical' principles in this hidden world that guaranteed change was an integral part of the 'fabric of nature and society'. The thought-forms encapsulated in Hegel's Ideas (or in DM) appeared to be at once both philosophical and self-certifying (i.e., they were based on thought and language alone, and hence were true a priori). Moreover, because dialectical concepts formed part of what seemed to be a radical philosophical and political tradition, they also struck them as revolutionary ideas.
Alas, here they were quite happy to accept appearances at face value!
Manifestly, dialectical concepts could only have arisen from Traditional Philosophy (workers aren't known for dreaming them up), which ideological source had already been coloured by centuries of boss-class dogma, as we have seen.
That in turn is because:
(a) Traditional Philosophy was the only source of developed 'High Theory' available to these individuals at the time -- again, as Lenin himself admitted:
"...[B]ourgeois ideology is far older in origin than socialist ideology, that it is more fully developed, and that it has at its disposal immeasurably more means of dissemination. And the younger the socialist movement in any given country, the more vigorously it must struggle against all attempts to entrench non-socialist ideology...." [Lenin (1947), pp.42-43. Bold emphases added.]
Of course, it doesn't help if revolutionaries like Lenin bring this ruling-class ideology with them into the movement.
(b) These erstwhile radicals were predisposed to look for a 'world-view' that told them change was inevitable, part of the cosmic order.
And,
(c) They searched for a set of ideas that could become exclusively their own -- because, as they will tell anyone prepared to listen, "Everyone has to have a philosophy!" -- which ideas, when they had finished shaping them, taught that the present order was ripe for change.
John Molyneux and Woods and Grant, I think, speak for all DM-fans:
"It is very difficult to sustain much ongoing political work for any length of time without a coherent alternative worldview to the dominant ideology which we encounter every day in the media (at work, at school, at college, etc.). A significant role in an alternative worldview is played by questions of philosophy.
"[Added in a footnote: To attempt an exact definition of philosophy at this point would be a difficult and lengthy distraction. But what I mean by it in this book is, roughly, 'general' or 'abstract' thinking about human beings and their relations between society and nature.]" [Molyneux (2012), p.5. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphasis added.]
"Before we start, you may be tempted to ask, 'Well, what of it?' Is it really necessary for us to bother about complicated questions of science and philosophy? To such a question, two replies are possible. If what is meant is: do we need to know about such things in order to go about our daily life, then the answer is evidently no. But if we wish to gain a rational understanding of the world in which we live, and the fundamental processes at work in nature, society and our own way of thinking, then matters appear in quite a different light.
"Strangely enough, everyone has a 'philosophy.' A philosophy is a way of looking at the world. We all believe we know how to distinguish right from wrong, good from bad. These are, however, very complicated issues which have occupied the attention of the greatest minds in history. When confronted with the terrible fact of the existence of events like the fratricidal war in the former Yugoslavia, the re-emergence of mass unemployment, the slaughter in Rwanda, many people will confess that they do not comprehend such things, and will frequently resort to vague references to 'human nature.' But what is this mysterious human nature which is seen as the source of all our ills and is alleged to be eternally unchangeable? This is a profoundly philosophical question, to which not many would venture a reply, unless they were of a religious cast of mind, in which case they would say that God, in His wisdom, made us like that. Why anyone should worship a Being that played such tricks on His creations is another matter.
"Those who stubbornly maintain that they have no philosophy are mistaken. Nature abhors a vacuum. People who lack a coherently worked-out philosophical standpoint will inevitably reflect the ideas and prejudices of the society and the milieu in which they live. That means, in the given context, that their heads will be full of the ideas they imbibe from the newspapers, television, pulpit and schoolroom, which faithfully reflect the interests and morality of existing society.
"Most people usually succeed in muddling through life, until some great upheaval compels them to re-consider the kind of ideas and values they grew up with. The crisis of society forces them to question many things they took for granted. At such times, ideas which seemed remote suddenly become strikingly relevant. Anyone who wishes to understand life, not as a meaningless series of accidents or an unthinking routine, must occupy themselves with philosophy, that is, with thought at a higher level than the immediate problems of everyday existence. Only by this means do we raise ourselves to a height where we begin to fulfil our potential as conscious human beings, willing and able to take control of our own destinies." [Woods and Grant (1995), pp.29-30. Italic emphasis in the original; bold added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. (This passage appears on pp.33-34 of the second edition.)]
The above sentiments are echoed by a dusty old Stalinist textbook (whose line, oddly enough, agrees with that of the two 'Trotskyite wreckers', above):
"A philosophical world outlook is a system of highly generalised theoretical views of the world, of nature, society and man. Philosophy seeks to substantiate a definite orientation in social, political, scientific, moral, aesthetic, and other spheres of life. Everybody forms his own particular view of the surrounding world, but this view often consists of no more than fragments of various contradictory ideas without any theoretical basis. The philosophical world outlook, on the other hand, is not merely the sum total but a system of ideas, opinions and conceptions of nature, society, man and his place in the world." [Konstantinov (1974), p.16. Bold emphasis added; paragraphs merged. Which is a bit rich given the fact that DM glories in contradiction! (More-or-less the same comment (almost word-for-word identical) can be found in Krapivin (1985), p.17.)]
However, the everyday musings of an average Jane Doe or John Q Public are hardly to be compared with the systematic thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas or Immanuel Kant, so the above elision (i.e., between such amateurish musings and the sophisticated theories of Traditional Philosophy) is clearly aimed at justifying the importation of ideas from ruling-class sources, which are, according to Marx, only "to be condemned":
"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis added.]
Plainly, the attitude displayed by DM-fans toward philosophy (somewhat fittingly) contradicts what Marx himself concluded about this archetypical ruling-class discipline.
This ancient 'world-view' -- on steroids in Hegel's work -- certainly appealed to the DM-classicists, those who later led the movement, and those who shaped and still shape its ideas. It appealed to them since it encapsulated thought-forms to which they were already highly susceptible by the time they hit adulthood. The class background, socialisation and education to which they were, and still are, subject under Capitalism meant that ruling-class ideas had already been installed in their brains long before they became revolutionaries. This thought-form, which has always promoted dogmatic, a priori 'knowledge' -- as well as 'abstractionism' -- mesmerised these comrades from the get-go.
In fact, this new batch of Dialectical and Hermetic nostrums (upside down, or 'the right way up') hardly raised an eyebrow.
Indeed, it alighted on fertile ground.13a2
Initially, very little specialist knowledge is needed to 'comprehend' DM; no expensive equipment or time-consuming experiments are required. And yet, within hours, this superscientific 'world-view' can be internalised with ease by most eager novitiates -- since, once more, it relies on thought alone, and hence appears to be 'self-evident'. Literally, in half an afternoon, or even less, an initiate can familiarise him/herself with a handful of theses that purport to explain all of reality, for all of time. Of course, learning the inner mysteries of the esoteric and mystical version of version of 'Marxist economics' takes much longer, and hence is largely a preserve of Academic Marxists and HCDs.
Just try learning Quantum -- or even Newtonian -- Mechanics that quickly!...
Moreover, because DM is connected with wider historic, or even romantic aspirations (outlined below), dialectically-distracted comrades soon become wedded (nay, superglued) to this doctrine. They become avid converts who act, talk and behave as if they have received a revelation from 'On High'.
As Alex Callinicos recently let slip (in his obituary of Christopher Hitchens):
"It was from him that I first learned, often with the force of revelation, many of the main ideas of the Marxist tradition." [Quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
This echoes George Novack's comment about Trotsky:
"He was an orthodox Marxist from his conversion to its doctrines in 1898 to his death in 1940." [Novack (1978), pp.271-72. Bold emphasis added.]
[There is much more of the same sort of material, below.]
Novack's use of quasi-religious language is, in the event, revealing in itself given what Marx had to say about philosophy and religion.
The subjective and often highly emotional response elicited in such individuals after they have passed through these dialectical 'doors of perception' reveals how crucially important this Hermetic Creed is to the revolutionary ego: it helps guarantee that the anger they feel toward the injustices of Capitalism -- perhaps compounded by their alienation from the system, coupled with all the hard work they have devoted to The Cause --, won't be in vain. For the DM-convert there now appears to be a point, not just to human history, but to the overall development of reality itself, courtesy of the obscure ramblings of a Christian Mystic.
This adoption of DM isn't just an example of the secularisation of Christianity, it also represents the re-enchantment of materialism.
Indeed, this theory now ensures that the life of each initiate assumes truly cosmic, or even historic, significance. Dialectics places the militant mind at the very centre of the philosophical, or at least the human, universe, for it offers each of these 'social atoms' a unifying purpose accompanied by a set of eternal 'truths' that underwrite and then confirm their exclusivity, linking their actions directly with the further development of history (or even reality) itself. Only they understand 'the dialectic' of nature and society -- the very Algebra of the Revolution -- only they have their fingers on the 'pulse of freedom', only they know how to further its development.
For the want of a better phrase, we might even call this insidious process the "Ptolemisation Of The Militant Mind", since around this 'theory', and their interpretation of it, all of reality, all of history, now revolves -- the obverse of Hegel's doctrine of the 'self-development' of 'Mind', which placed the development of 'God's Mind' at the centre and the periphery of this process, put into neat 'logical' order by a handful of trite, but egregious, a priori theses.
The heady romance of becoming a revolutionary and an active participant in the cosmic drift of the entire universe, or of humanity itself, now takes over. As Alan Wald (veteran US Marxist and editor of Against the Current) noted in connection with the US-SWP:
"To join the SWP was to become a person with a mission, to become part of a special group of men and women who, against all odds, wanted to change society for the better; one felt a bit more in control of the universe." [Quoted from here; bold emphasis added.]
Much the same can be said about those joining other far-left groups. Indeed, even rank-and-file revolutionaries are often affected in this way. Speaking of his time in the Militant Tendency, this is what Andy Troke had to say:
"It's like somebody who has been through a religious period. You look to either Trotsky, Marx, Lenin, Engels or Ted Grant or Peter Taaffe and you have got the rationale for why people are reacting this way or that. And obviously, everyone else is illogical, because you have the right view. I believe there was a great deal of this type of thinking: we were the chosen few. We had the right ideology. People like Tribune, who were at that time Militant's main opponents didn't know where they were going.... We were the right ones." [Quoted in Tourish and Wohlforth (2000), p.181. Bold emphases added. Links added.]
To be honest, I must admit to similar thoughts and feelings myself when I joined the UK-SWP in 1987, pinned a red, clenched fist badge to my lapel, and started selling Socialist Worker. I am sure I wasn't the only one who reacted this way. In fact, I can recall a period in 1988 when a major dispute broke out in the UK-SWP following a talk given by Lindsey German. Lindsey had advanced the claim that, in her, there were "no traces of bourgeois ideology". For some time after that it became a hot topic whether or not revolutionaries were free from all such 'indecent thoughts' -- or, "traces", which was the buzz word used at the time. One could almost hear an echo of the phrases "Born again!" and "Cleansed by the blood of the Lamb!"
For all the world, DM-fans appear to fall in love with this 'theory'. That itself is evident from the irrational, emotional, often extremely abusive, if not violently aggressive way they respond when it is attacked. [On that, see below, as well as here.]
The vitriol, hostility, lies and smears I have had to face now for many years suggests I wouldn't last long if DM-fans were ever to gain power in the UK! Indeed, one prominent Marxist Professor of Economics, Andrew Kliman no less, in an e-mail exchange expressed the fervent hope I should "Eat sh*t and die!" (either that or quaff some Hemlock), simply because I had the temerity to question the sacred dialectic. This comradely wish was repeated here (in the comments section) in October 2013, but was deleted by the moderators soon after because of the violent and intemperate language the good Professor thought to use! Another UK-SWP comrade (implicitly) accused me of being worse than the Nazis, and for the same reason! Incidentally, this comrade has now left the UK-SWP. Another recently compared me to the Coronavirus!
[Check out the other emotive and abusive comments in the same discussion thread. I hasten to add once more that I am not complaining about this; given the analysis presented in this Essay and at the site at this site, I expect it!]
However, the 'dialectical ego' can only ascend to the next 'level' if it becomes a willing vehicle for the tide of history, a veritable slave to the dialectic. DM now expresses in its earthly incarnation cosmic forces that have supposedly governed all of history, or even all of reality from the Big Bang forward, and will continue so doing until the end of time. Its theses are woven into the very fabric of history and the Universe; just like the 'Word of God'.
A veritable Dialectical Logos, if you will.
Or, at least, judged by the way DM-acolytes speak about their theory and about those who promulgate it from the dialectical pulpit, that is how the DM-Faithful clearly picture it to themselves.
[On that, see here.]
Indeed, the dialectic governs the nature and future development of every last particle in existence, including the thoughts of these, the 'least' of its slaves:
"It goes without saying that my recapitulation of mathematics and the natural sciences was undertaken in order to convince myself also in detail -- of what in general I was not in doubt -- that in nature, amid the welter of innumerable changes, the same dialectical laws of motion force their way through as those which in history govern the apparent fortuitousness of events; the same laws which similarly form the thread running through the history of the development of human thought and gradually rise to consciousness in thinking man; the laws which Hegel first developed in all-embracing but mystic form, and which we made it one of our aims to strip of this mystic form and to bring clearly before the mind in their complete simplicity and universality." [Engels (1976), pp.11-12. Bold emphasis added.]
"Dialectics, however, is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human society and thought." [Ibid., p.180. Bold emphasis added.]
So, by becoming a willing vehicle, ready to channel the mysterious 'mediations' that emanate from the "Totality" (which, like 'God', can't be defined, but which works no less mysteriously), through revolutionary 'good works' ("activity") and pure thoughts ("non-Revisionist" devotion to "the tradition"), by joining a movement that can't fail to alter fundamentally the course of human history, the petty-bourgeois ego is 'born again', to a higher purpose, with a cosmically-, or historically-ordained mandate to match.
The dialectical novitiate thus emerges as a professional revolutionary -- sometimes with a shiny new name to prove it. But, certainly with a brand new persona.
The scales now drop from its eyes.
The Hermetic Virus has found another victim.
There is now no way back for this lost soul.
Again, as Max Eastman pointed out:13a3
"Hegelism is like a mental disease -- you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]
In view of the general atrophy of their critical faculties caused by their commitment to DM -- compounded by the nausea inducing sycophancy exhibited by many of them (on that, see below) -- who can doubt it?
This now provides these social atoms with several well-known, social psychological motivations, inducements and reinforcements. They in turn help convince these Hermetic Victims that:
(i) As individuals they can become key figures in the further development of history -- helping determine the direction that social evolution will next take.
(ii) Their personal existence isn't meaningless, after all --, or for nought.
(iii) Whatever it was that motivated their personal alienation from class society can be rectified, reversed or even redeemed (in whole or in part) through the right sort of acts, thoughts, and deeds -- reminiscent of the way that Pelagian forms of 'muscular Christianity' taught that salvation might be earned through pure thoughts, good works, and the severe treatment of the body.
Dialectics now occupies a role analogous to that which religious belief has always assumed in the lives of the credulous, giving cosmic significance and consolation to these, its very own, petty-bourgeois victims.
Same cause -- alienation. Similar 'cure' -- a palliative drug.
Proletarian Discipline? -- No Thanks!
However, because they haven't been recruited from the working class, these social atoms need an internally-generated unifying force -- a theory that supplies a set of self-certifying ideas -- to bind them to The Party and The Cause. Indeed, as Trotsky, Kautsky and Lenin pointed out:
"A worker comes to socialism as a part of a whole, along with his class, from which he has no prospect of escaping. He is even pleased with the feeling of his moral unity with the mass, which makes him more confident and stronger. The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become. At the beginning of the Social-Democratic movement, every intellectual who joined, even though not above the average, won for himself a place in the working-class movement. Today every newcomer finds, in the Western European countries, the colossal structure of working-class democracy already existing." [The Intelligentsia and Socialism, quoted from here. Bold emphases added.]
"'...Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter....'" [Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1976a), pp.161-62. Bold emphases alone added. Another version of Kautsky's comments can be found here. I have used the Peking edition in this Essay, which differs slightly from the on-line Russian/English version.]
As such, they require a Cosmic, or even a social, Whole allied to a Holistic Theory to help repair their own social fragmentation. That is where the mysterious "Totality" (with its 'universal interconnections' and 'mediations' -- factors that are analogous to the Omnipresence of 'God' and the 'mediations of Christ') comes into its own. But, just like 'God', the DM-"Totality" is so mysterious that, beyond a few vague gestures and much hand waving, none of its devotees can tell you of its nature, even though they all gladly bend the knee to its Contradictory Will.
Given its origin in Hermetic Mysticism, that is hardly surprising.
In stark contrast, workers involved in collective labour have unity forced on them by well-known, external, material forces. These compel workers to combine; they don't persuade them to do so as a result of some theory. Workers are thus compelled to associate, with unity externally-imposed upon them. This is a material, not an Ideal force.13a
In contrast, once more, while the class war forces workers to unite, it drives apart these petty-bourgeois individuals, these professional revolutionaries, depositing them in ever smaller, continually fragmenting sects. [How it does this will be explored in the next few sub-sections.]
In that case, a holistic, dialectical theory, where everything is interconnected, replaces collective struggle as the unifying principle in Dialectical Marxism; petty-bourgeois and de-classé Marxists are thus 'united' by a set of universal, a priori, dogmatic theses.
As Lenin himself noted:
"It is precisely the factory, which seems only a bogey to some, that represents that highest form of capitalist co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to organise, and placed it at the head of all the other sections of the toiling and exploited population. And it is precisely Marxism, the ideology of the proletariat trained by capitalism, that has taught and id teaching unstable intellectuals to distinguish between the factory as a means of exploitation (discipline based on fear of starvation) and the factory as a means of organisation (discipline based on collective work united by the conditions of a technically highly developed production). The discipline and organisation which come so hard to the bourgeois intellectual are especially easily acquired by the proletariat just because of this factory 'schooling'. Mortal fear of this school and utter failure to understand its importance as an organising factor are characteristic precisely of the ways of thinking which reflect the petty-bourgeois mode of life and which give rise to that species of anarchism that the German Social-Democrats call Edelanarchismus, i.e., the anarchism of the 'noble' gentleman, or aristocratic anarchism, as I would call it. This aristocratic anarchism is particularly characteristic of the Russian nihilist. He thinks of the Party organisation as a monstrous 'factory'; he regards the subordination of the part to the whole and of the minority to the majority as 'serfdom' (see Axelrod's articles); division of labour under the direction of a centre evokes from him a tragicomical outcry against people being transformed into 'cogs and wheels' (to turn editors into contributors being considered a particularly atrocious species of such transformation); mention of the organisational rules of the Party calls forth a contemptuous grimace and the disdainful remark (intended for the 'formalists') that one could very well dispense with rules altogether." [Lenin (1976a), pp.248-49. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added. (The on-line Russian/English version is slightly different from the published (Peking) edition I have used here.)]
Unfortunately, Lenin failed to apply these insights to himself, to his own class origin and current class position. He was, however, quite happy to include Marx and Engels among the "bourgeois intelligentsia":
"The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical, and economic theories elaborated by educated representatives of the propertied classes, by intellectuals. By their social status the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia." [Lenin (1947), p.32. Bold emphases added.]
The same was the case concerning George Novack's 'self-awareness':
"Many of the most important political and intellectual leaders of the Marxist parties have been middle-class intellectuals. This is true of Marx and Engels, the founders of the movement. Bebel and Dietzgen the elder were of proletarian origin, but these two stand out as conspicuous exceptions in a galaxy which includes Lassalle, DeLeon, Plekhanov, Liebknecht, Luxembourg, Lenin and Trotsky. [As we have seen, this isn't in fact true of Dietzgen -- RL.] All of these intellectuals, 'having grasped the historical movement as a whole', broke with the class of their origin, and merged their lives with the fate of the working class. Trotsky informs us that, of the 15 original members of the Council of People's Commissary elected on the day following the October insurrection, eleven were intellectuals and only four workers....
"Since Marxism, the science of the proletarian revolution, is itself the supreme creation of middle-class intellectuals, and every Marxist party has had its quota of militants drawn from the radical intelligentsia, a Marxist party can, least of all political organizations, ignore the role that intellectuals may play in the struggle of the working class for emancipation. But the relationship between the radical intellectuals and the revolutionary workers' party must be correctly understood. Although individual intellectuals may take a place in the leadership of the party by their talents, energy and devotion, intellectuals are generally an auxiliary force of the party with their own special talents to contribute to its work. There is a place for intellectuals inside the party, in the mass organizations it supports, and in many party activities. But the main body of the party must be recruited from, and rest squarely upon, the vanguard of the working class. The party and its leadership must have a solidly proletarian core." [Novack (1935). Bold emphases and links added.]
The social forces that operate on Marxist dialecticians are thus quintessentially individualistic, manifestly Ideal, and notoriously 'centrifugal' (as, indeed, Lenin pointed out above and earlier, and as we will see again, below); indeed, as one participant admitted in the recent debate over the crisis that engulfed the UK-SWP in January 2013:
"I don't know if you have permanent factions within ISO -- my experience of the movement is that they are a disaster. I assume you have a constitution, rules for members to abide by and a disciplinary procedure to deal with those who deliberately flout them. So do we, and surely you respect our right to act accordingly." [Jeffrey Hurford, quoted from here; accessed 07/02/2013.]
As the late Chris Harman also noted about pre-capitalist working classes:
"Peasant revolts would start with vast numbers of people rising up to divide the land of the local feudal lords, but once the lord was defeated they would fall to squabbling among themselves about how they would divide the land. As Marx put it, peasants were like 'potatoes in a sack'; they could be forced together by some outside power but were not capable of linking permanently to represent their own interests. Capitalism makes workers cooperate in production within the factory, and those cooperative skills can easily be turned against the system, as when workers organise themselves into unions. Because they are massed together in huge concentrations it is much easier for workers to democratically control such bodies than it was for previously oppressed classes." [Quoted from here; bold added. Paragraphs merged.]
DM-theorists and leading members of Dialectical Marxism aren't proletarians, so they, too, are like 'potatoes in a sack', incapable of uniting unless forced to do so by a "power" of some sort. As we will see, this "power" is 'intellectual' as well as bureaucratic, and it has been internalised. In response, each revolutionary party has developed a set of anti-democratic and bureaucratic rules in order to ensure (at least, temporary) internal cohesion, doctrinal 'purity', and revolutionary integrity is maintained.
Without DM -- imported "from the outside", from Mystical Christianity and Traditional Thought --, the rationale underlying the romantic revolutionary idea -- which, once more, situates each DM-acolyte at the centre of the dialectical universe -- would lose both its impact and its appeal.
Furthermore, because 'dialectics' provides each 'dialectical comrade' with an apparently coherent, but paradigmatically traditional, picture of reality, it supplies each of its victims with an internalised set of motivating factors. Indeed, because this theory is represented individualistically inside each dialectical skull (which convinces one and all that they alone truly 'understand' this esoteric theory -- they alone have the right 'abstractions'), it can't help but divide each 'dialectical disciple', one from the next -- for reasons explored in the next sub-section, and throughout the rest of this Essay.
Militant Martinets
As we have seen (and will see in more detail in this and the next sub-section), the sectarianism inherent in Dialectical Marxism is a consequence of the class origin and current class position of its leading figures and most important theorists. Dialectics, the theory of universal opposites, soon goes to work on their minds and turns each and every one of these serial sectarians into fanatical faction fiends, on steroids.
Collective discipline is paramount inside Bolshevik-style parties. But, the strong-willed, petty-bourgeois militant this style of politics attracts isn't used to this form of externally-imposed regimentation (as Lenin noted); as we have seen, these social atoms are in fact attracted by internally-processed, self-certifying ideas. Their socialisation as head strong individuals and their commitment to a theory of knowledge which is based on bourgeois individualism (on that see Essay Three Part Two) means that fights soon break out, often over what seem minor, even petty personal gripes.14
Ever since childhood, these comrades have been socialised think like social atoms, but in a revolutionary party they have to act like social molecules, which is a psychological feat that lies way above their 'pay grade' (i.e., way beyond capacities that have been created, or motivated, by their class origin or their current class position). Because of this, as noted above, personal disputes soon break out and are immediately re-configured as political differences (that is because, for these individuals, the personal is political). Once again, since these are primarily disputes over ideas they require, and are soon given, theoretical 'justification'. However, because DM glories in contradiction and in splitting (see below), it is ideally suited toward that end.
Unfortunately, again as Lenin and Trotsky intimated, these individuals are socially-conditioned egocentrics who, in their own eyes, enjoy direct access to the dialectical motherlode (a hot wire installed in each DM-cranium by those self-certifying 'abstractions' and Hegelian concepts, upside down or 'the right way up') -- and they can't resist exploiting this fact. That is because this 'dynamic', contradictory world-view defines them as revolutionaries.
In such an Ideal environment, the DM-classics -- just like the Bible and other assorted Holy Books -- soon come into their own.15
Again, as Lenin and Trotsky pointed out, ruling-class theorists and 'intellectuals' endeavour to make names for themselves by developing 'their own ideas', carving out a corner, an exclusive niche, in the market of ideas, But, they can only do that by criticising the ideas of every other rival theorist. This is, after all, an integral part of being able to establish a reputation and standing among their intellectual peers, which is an essential component in furthering their career as a theorist worthy of attention -- or, indeed, an essential component when defending and promoting the interests of a patron, or some other beneficent member of the ruling-class. This was particularly true in earlier centuries.
Lenin:
"'...Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter....'" [Kautsky, quoted in Lenin (1976a), pp.161-62. Bold emphases alone added. Another version of Kautsky's comments can be found here. I have used the Peking edition in this Essay, which differs slightly from the on-line Russian version ]
Trotsky:
"The intellectual, however, comes to socialism, breaking his class umbilical cord as an individual, as a personality, and inevitably seeks to exert influence as an individual. But just here he comes up against obstacles -- and as time passes the bigger these obstacles become." [The Intelligentsia and Socialism, quoted from here. Bold emphasis added.]
Just as petty-bourgeois capitalists have to rely on their individual knowledge, drive, effort and skill in order to survive in the face of Big Capital and the working class, so these unfortunate dialecticians also find they have to ply their trade in the revolutionary movement as individual theorists, armed only with a set of dogmatic ideas, fortified by an entire Thesaurus of obscure jargon, arcane terminology, sub-Aristotelian 'logic' and Mickey Mouse Science. Hence, these hapless comrades find that they, too, have to find their way in far more hostile revolutionary waters.
[Anyone who doubts this only has to read the writings churned out by these characters to see how little respect they have for the work of the vast majority of other revolutionary theorists (sometimes whose opinions differ from their own only in the minutest of theological details); their work always appears to be a "rant", a "re-hash", a "screed"; it is invariably "boring", "turgid", even "hysterical"; the one writing it has "bloviated" all over the place. In addition, we find a surfeit of scatological epithets. (Monty Python lampooned this mind-set only too well: "The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f*cking Judean People's Front"). Having said that, it isn't being suggested that every last one of them adopts this stance cynically. Many have very noble intentions -- but, once again, this is a class issue. I have posted some of this material in Essays One and Ten Part One, as well as in several places below -- for example, here and Appendix B.]
So it is that these 'social atoms' have brought with them into the Workers' Movement a divisive, petty-bourgeois trait. And, by all accounts, they have perfected it with all the verve of inveterate religious sectarians, whom they resemble.
In the market for 'Marxist' ideas, those with the most sharply-honed critical skills soon claw their way to the top.
As one-time UK-SWP stalwart, Andy Wilson, pointed out:
"Things get interesting when you go a little deeper. If the correct, imputed class-consciousness resides in the revolutionary party, and yet the members of the revolutionary party are in fact pulled in different directions by their day-to-day experience, where in the revolutionary party does it actually reside? Well, of course, if the members at the 'periphery' of the party -- where it makes contact with the world outside, so to say -- are being pulled by the class, then the correct consciousness must lie at the point furthest away from this periphery -- it must reside at the 'centre' of the party. That is why all the groups have their 'centre', and 'centralised' leaderships.
"However, in reality the central committees are also torn apart by ideological differences; by outside allegiances, prejudices, whims -- whatever it is that drives these people. Therefore, ultimately possession of the correct consciousness comes down very, very often to one person (though a member of the SWP central committee once confided to me that, in her opinion, only two people in the SWP had the correct revolutionary 'instincts' -- herself and Tony Cliff). The way that Gerry Healy dominated the WRP, the way that Cliff dominated the SWP, and so on, is perhaps not merely down to their talents or the force of their personalities, but has been prepared by the logic of a particular mindset. So, while there is no Führerprinzip involved, in practice these groups are nevertheless generally dominated by powerful individuals, or powerful cliques." [Quoted from here; italic emphasis in the original. Accessed 04/02/2013.]
Except, Wilson seems not to have applied any sort of class analysis to this phenomenon, nor does he even so much as mention the theory that lies at its heart.
And that isn't surprising, either, since he is also a dialectician.
As Wilson noted, the fact that such individuals have very strong personalities (which they clearly require, otherwise they wouldn't survive long at the top of a revolutionary party, let alone climb the greasy pole) merely compounds the problem. As noted above, in order to make a name for themselves, and advance their 'revolutionary careers', it becomes important, if not necessary, for them to disagree with every other theorist, which they almost invariably proceed to do.
In fact, the expectation is that every single comrade should argue his/her corner, and do so with force, vigour and conviction. And, in some parties, with no little added violence, verbal and/or physical.
While sectarianism is caused by petty-bourgeois social 'atoms' such as these, dialectics only makes a bad situation worse.
How is DM able to do this?
The answer isn't hard to find: what better theory could there be than one that is capable of initiating and encouraging endless disputation, one as contradictory and incomprehensible as DM? What other theory informs all who fall under its hypnotic spell that progress (even in ideas) may only be had through "internal contradiction", and thus through controversy and splitting?
[Or, as a Maoist might say, "One divides into two".]
Indeed, as Lenin himself argued:
"The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts...is the essence (one of the 'essentials,' one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics.... The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute...." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Paragraphs merged; bold emphasis alone added.]
There it is: "splitting" is an "essential", if not "the principle" aspect of this theory, with "struggle" an "absolute". Plainly, this "essential" feature must also involve the relations between comrades.
So, an emphasis on intra-party strife and splits sits right at the heart of DM!
In which case, fans-of-the-'dialectic' needn't wait for the ruling-class to divide their movement, they are experts already!
More importantly, as we will see, DM is almost unique in its capacity to 'justify' anything at all and its opposite, both alternatives often promoted or rationalised by the very same dialectician in the same book, article or even speech! Hence, this theory is unique in its capacity to rationalise any relevant point of view and its opposite at the same time as it promotes splits!
This helps explain all the factions, the fragmentation, the corruption and the screw ups we see all too often at the 'top' of our movement, and, indeed, right throughout it.
Again, as I pointed out in Part One:
Herein lies the source of much of the corruption we see in Dialectical Marxism. If your core theory allows you to justify anything you like and its opposite (since it glories in contradiction), then your party can be as undemocratic as you please while you argue that it is 'dialectically' the opposite and is the very epitome of democratic accountability. It will also 'allow' you to claim that your party is in the vanguard of the fight against all forms of oppression, all the while covering up, ignoring, justifying, rationalising, excusing or explaining away sexual abuse and rape in that very same party. After all, if you are used to 'thinking dialectically', an extra contradiction or two is simply more grist to the dialectical mill!
And if you complain, well you just don't 'understand' dialectics...
DM is therefore the equivalent of throwing petrol on a raging fire.
For Dialectical Marxists, the drive to impose one's views on others thus becomes irresistible. Doctrinal control (i.e., the control of all those inner, privatised ideas lodged in every other socially-atomised party skull, which threaten the legitimacy of the ideas of other dialecticians similarly so beleaguered) now acts as a surrogate for external control by material forces.
Indeed, this desire to control the thoughts of all the other 'social atoms' inside the Party has even been given the grandiloquent name: "democratic centralism" -- a nice 'contradiction-in-terms' for you to ponder.16
[Don't get me wrong; I am here referring to the Zinoviev-Stalin aberration, not democratic decisions openly agreed upon and collectively implemented, whatever we finally decide to call it.]
As a recent (anonymous) contributor to the internal debate in the UK-SWP over the crisis that engulfed it in early 2013, puts it:
"The Bolshevik leadership of 1917 was elected individually. There was no ban on factions. On the eve of the October Revolution, Zinoviev and Kamenev publicly opposed the insurrection in Maxim Gorky's newspaper...and resigned from the Bolshevik Central Committee. They were not expelled from the Party. The model operated currently by the SWP is not that of the Bolshevik revolution. It is a version of the Zinovievite model adopted during the period of 'Bolshevisation' in the mid-1920s and then honed by ever smaller and more marginal groups." [Quoted from here. Accessed 29/01/2013. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added; paragraphs merged. On this, see also Appendix D and this. (The background details can be found in Cliff (1985), Chapter 19.) For an alternative view, see the UK-SWP Special Pre-Conference Bulletin article 'You Say Kamenev, I Say Bogdanov', written by 'Kevin', pp.69-70. Bold emphasis added.]
But, just as genuine religionists soon discovered, mind-control is much easier to secure if an appeal is made to impenetrably obscure doctrines that no one understands, no one can explain, but which all must accept and all must repeat constantly, almost mindlessly, in order to dull the critical faculties.
Hence, because the party can't reproduce the class struggle inside its four walls, and thereby force unity on its cadres externally (contrary to what happens with the working class), it can only control political thought internally (in each head) by turning it into a repetitive, mind-numbing mantra, insisting on doctrinal orthodoxy, and then accusing all those who don't conform to such Ideal standards of heresy, or -- even worse -- of not "understanding" dialectics!
Despite regular calls to "build the party", it now looks like small is beautiful, if not highly desirable. Clearly, that is because it allows for maximum thought-control. In a small party the 'purity' of the 'revolutionary tradition' is easier to enforce and hence control.
Factionalism, splits and sectarianism are thus intrinsic, constant and ubiquitous features of the political and organisational practice of these petty-bourgeois revolutionaries. This keeps their parties small just as it also helps distinguish them from all the rest.
This is what Hal Draper had to say about the situation in America alone, thirty or forty years ago:
"American socialism today has hit a new low in terms of sect fragmentation. There are more sects going through their gyrations at this moment than have ever existed in all previous periods in this country taken together. And the fragments are still fissioning, down to the sub-microscopic level. Politically speaking, their average has dropped from the comic-opera plane to the comic-book grade. Where the esoteric sects (mainly Trotskyist splinters) of the 1930s tended toward a sort of super sophistication in Marxism and futility in practice, there is a gaggle of grouplets now (mainly Maoist-Castroite) characterized by amnesia regarding the Marxist tradition, ignorance of the socialist experience, and extreme primitivism. The road to an American socialist movement surely lies over the debris, or around the rotting off-shoots of, this fetid jungle of sects." [Quoted from here.]
This isn't just an American phenomenon, either, it is international, and, as we will see in Essay Ten Part One, the situation has worsened considerably since the above words were committed to paper. [The fragmentation of the UK-SWP is just the latest example of this trend.]
In this Dialectical Matrix, an Authoritarian Personality type soon emerges to endorse, and then enforce, ideological purity (disguised now as part of an endeavour to keep faith with "tradition" -- which is, not un-coincidentally, a noxious trait shared by all known religions). "Tradition" now becomes a watch-word to test and maintain the doctrinal purity of party cadres -- especially those who might stray too far from the narrow path which alone leads the DM-elect toward revolutionary salvation.17
This naturally helps inflame yet more disputes and thus more splits.
[History has indeed confirmed that the 'centrifugal forces' of fragmentation that operate between dialectically-distracted comrades far out-weigh their constant calls for unity. (I return to this theme below. See also Appendix F.)]
The Faith Of Leading DM-Converts
Marx Equates Philosophy And Religion
We have already seen Marx nail his colours to the anti-Philosophy mast with these woods:
"Feuerbach's great achievement is.... The proof that philosophy is nothing else but religion rendered into thought and expounded by thought, i.e., another form and manner of existence of the estrangement of the essence of man; hence equally to be condemned...." [Marx (1975c), p.381. I have used the on-line version, here. Bold emphasis added.]
So, it is no surprise, therefore, to see DM-fans -- who reject the above, as well as Marx's advice that they should "leave philosophy" -- both act and express themselves in a quasi-religious terms.
Trotsky Gets His Priorities 'Right'
In addition to the many examples listed here, the above allegations concerning the quasi-religious, or highly emotional and irrational responses elicited from dialecticians when their theory is criticised, find ready confirmation in the case of at least one leading Marxist. George Novack records the following meeting he and Max Shachtman had with Trotsky in Mexico, in 1937:
"[O]ur discussion glided into the subject of philosophy.... We talked about the best ways of studying dialectical materialism, about Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, and about the theoretical backwardness of American radicalism. Trotsky brought forward the name of Max Eastman, who in various works had polemicized against dialectics as a worthless idealist hangover from the Hegelian heritage of Marxism. He became tense and agitated. 'Upon going back to the States,' he urged, 'you comrades must at once take up the struggle against Eastman's distortion and repudiation of dialectical materialism. There is nothing more important than this. Pragmatism, empiricism, is the greatest curse of American thought. You must inoculate younger comrades against its infection.'
"I was somewhat surprised at the vehemence of his argumentation on this matter at such a moment. As the principal defendant in absentia in the Moscow trials, and because of the dramatic circumstances of his voyage in exile, Trotsky then stood in the centre of international attention. He was fighting for his reputation, liberty, and life against the powerful government of Stalin, bent on his defamation and death. After having been imprisoned and gagged for months by the Norwegian authorities, he had been kept incommunicado for weeks aboard their tanker.
"Yet on the first day after reunion with his cothinkers, he spent more than an hour explaining how important it was for a Marxist movement to have a correct philosophical method and to defend dialectical materialism against its opponents!... [Trotsky later wrote:] 'The question of correct philosophical doctrine, that is, a correct method of thought, is of decisive significance to a revolutionary party....'" [Novack (1978), pp.269-71. Italics in the original. Bold emphases and link added. Spelling altered to conform with UK English; quotation marks adapted to agree with conventions adopted at this site. Several paragraphs merged.]
The accuracy of Novack's memory is confirmed by the following comment recorded by Trotsky himself:
"...It would not be amiss, therefore, to refer to the fact that my first serious conversation with comrades Shachtman and Warde, in the train immediately after my arrival in Mexico in January 1937, was devoted to the necessity of persistently propagating dialectic materialism. After our American section split from the Socialist Party I insisted most strongly on the earliest possible publication of a theoretical organ, having again in mind the need to educate the party, first and foremost its new members, in the spirit of dialectic materialism. In the United States, I wrote at that time, where the bourgeoisie systematically in stills (sic) vulgar empiricism in the workers, more than anywhere else is it necessary to speed the elevation of the movement to a proper theoretical level. On January 20, 1939, I wrote to comrade Shachtman concerning his joint article with comrade Burnham, 'Intellectuals in Retreat':
'The section on the dialectic is the greatest blow that you, personally, as the editor of the New International could have delivered to Marxist theory.... Good. We will speak about it publicly.'
"Thus a year ago I gave open notice in advance to Shachtman that I intended to wage a public struggle against his eclectic tendencies. At that time there was no talk whatever of the coming opposition; in any case furthest from my mind was the supposition that the philosophic bloc against Marxism prepared the ground for a political bloc against the program of the Fourth International." [Trotsky (1971), p.142. Bold emphases and link added.]18
Given the content of this Essay -- and Marx's own words --, Trotsky's semi-religious fervour, his emotional attachment to the dialectic, and his irrational response to Max Eastman and James Burnham, for example, are now much easier to understand. Can you imagine anyone getting so worked up over the minutiae underlying the demise of Feudalism? Or, the fall of Rome?....
[Added on Edit: I then include some more examples of 'DM-faith' displayed by leading Dialectical Marxists. That material has been omitted.]
Lord Acton was mistaken when he said:
"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This gets things completely the wrong way round. As Tony Cliff remarked in a talk, it is lack of power that corrupts absolutely. It corrupts the working class, and that in turn allows the members of the ruling-class to get away with whatever they feel they can get away with, corrupting them in return.
Similarly, a passive working class allows revolutionaries -- or, rather, their supposed 'tribunes' -- to get up to all kinds of dialectical and organisational mischief. Hence, the latter become corrupted, too.
As we have seen, among the many different forms this corruption takes is the general lack of any sort of effective democratic control exercised on Central Committees and Party 'Leaders'.
The aforementioned Authoritarian Personality-type -- in the shape of The Leader, The 'Great Helmsman'/'Teacher', the Central Committee [CC] itself, or one or more of their lackeys -- ensures that democratic accountability is, at best, merely formal. Hence, genuine democratic control soon becomes an early casualty in this backwater of the class war. Democracy is, among other things, an external constraint exercised by the majority on the individual, which, naturally, helps explain why it is favoured by the majority. By way of contrast, democratic control is equally feared by the petty-bourgeois minority, and for the same reason. In such dialectically-dominated micro-parties, democracy threatens the internally-enforced mind control this minority prefers. Which is, of course, why so many DM-parties have latched onto the slate system as the preferred method of electing their CCs, and their preferred method for denying the rank-and-file any sort of democratic control.18a
This, too, is one of the reasons why Capitalists themselves need the state -- packed with individuals they can trust, selected by their very own version of the slate system (which is quite often no more sophisticated than this: which bed you were born in or which bed you climbed into) -- to impose and then consolidate the rule of the minority over otherwise democratically-inclined workers. And, it is also why they need to call upon various Idealist and reactionary 'theories' to convince the recalcitrant majority that this is "All for your benefit, you understand", since "We are all in it together" and "It's in the national interest", yada, yada...
It is also why Dialectical Marxists need the centralist, but not the democratic, part of democratic centralism, and why democracy is ditched so readily and so often.
Naturally, political degeneration like this doesn't develop in a vacuum, independent of social forces. As noted here, the malignant side-effects of Dialectical Dementia tend to dominate (i) When the materialist counter-weight provided by the working class is totally absent (i.e., before the proletariat had emerged as an effective political and social force), (ii) When that the influence of that counter-weight is much more attenuated, or (iii) In periods of "downturn", retreat and defeat. This is, of course, also when Dialectical Druggies tend to 're-discover' this 'theory' and when they all attempt to snort along the 'correct' philosophical line.19
Small wonder then that these petty-bourgeois victims cling to DM like drunks to lampposts -- and, alas, like the 'god'-botherers among us cling to their own favoured source of opiates.
DM now shapes and dominates the personal-, and party-identity of such comrades. Any attack on this sacred doctrine is an attack not just on the glue that holds each of these social atoms together, but also on the cement that holds together the party and the entire Dialectical Marxist "tradition".19a
In their own eyes, these professional, petty-bourgeois revolutionaries are special; they live -- no they embody -- the revolution. They have caught the tide of history, they must keep the faith.
Commitment to the revolution on these terms now creates a layer of militants who, for all the world, appear to suffer from some sort of dialectical personality disorder -- again, one aspect of which is The Leader Complex.
This helps explain why, among dialecticians, disagreements quickly become so personal, and why factionalism is so rife -- and, indeed, why strong characters, like Ted Grant, Gerry Healy, Michael Pablo, Tony Cliff, Ernest Mandel, Pierre Lambert, Sean Matgamna, Marlene Dixon, Abimael Guzmán, and host of others, foment splits and divisions almost from the get-go.
As noted above, once more, fragmentation lies at the very heart of DM, and is now synonymous with Dialectical Marxism itself -- witness the well-aimed joke in Monty Python's Life of Brian (about the Judean People's Front, etc.). It is memorable because everyone recognises its central core of truth.
So, Dialectical Marxists are soon transformed into Militant Martinets, ostracising and expelling anyone who fails to tow the 'correct' line. As we have seen, these Dialectical Despots have very powerful personalities, something they use to good effect in the small ponds they invariably patrol -- and clearly prefer. Expulsions, splits and bans thus keep their grouplets small, and thus easier to manipulate.
The petty-bourgeois revolutionary ego helps keep our movement fragmented, small, insular and thus ineffectual --, clearly in preference to its being democratic, outward-looking and effective. No wonder then that in such circumstances, democracy goes out the window along with reasonableness --, and, of course, along with any significant political impact.
In this way, ruling-ideas have come to rule Dialectical Marxism, which has in turn helped ruin our movement -- by allowing those who divide, rule, and those who rule, divide.
Another ironic 'dialectical inversion' for readers to ponder.
The Road To Dialectical Damascus
Each Dialectical Disciple acts as if he/she alone has direct access to the exact meaning of the dialectic (here is an excellent recent example of this syndrome), uncannily mirroring the individualism that underpins Protestantism wherein believers are required to work out their own salvation in 'fear and trembling' by means of a thorough study of the Bible, allied to endless disputation. This also helps account for the interminable dialectical debates over vacuous Hegelian concepts (rather like those that exercised the Medieval Schoolmen): for example, whether this or that thesis is "abstract", "positivist", or "one-sided", or whether 'opposites' are 'united' or 'identical' --, or, indeed, whether "motion precedes matter"..., or is it the other way round?20
This also helps explain why each DM-supplicant thinks that no one else really "understands" the dialectic like they do, or as well as they do.
[Since no one does in fact understand it (on this, see Essay Nine Part One), that is a very easy claim to make -- and one no less difficult to disprove.]
Every opponent is now tarred with the same brush (on this, see below, as well as here): all fail to "understand" the dialectic -- that is, all except the blessed soul that made that rather bold claim!
Just like the Old Testament Prophets, it is almost as if these individuals have received a personal visit from the 'Self-Developing Idea' itself.
Indeed, The Road to Damascus and The Road to Dialectics have more in common than just a capital "D".
All this explains why, to each DM-acolyte, the dialectic is so personal, so intimately their own possession, and why you can sense the personal hurt they feel when it is comprehensively trashed, as it has been at this site. [For two excellent recent examples of this malady, check out these two incoherent videos.]
Hence, any attack on this 'precious jewel' is an attack on the revolutionary ego itself and will be resisted with all the bile and venom at its command.
And that explains, too, all the abuse you, dear reader, will receive if you think to challenge the Dialectical Doctrines of a single one of these Hermetic Head Cases.
Dialectics And Defeat
Again, as noted above, in defeat these individuals reach for what is in effect a comfort blanket -- Dialectical Methadone -- in order to insulate their minds from reality and constant failure. And, by all accounts, this ersatz opiate has done an excellent job. In fact, anyone who attempts to argue with a single one of these Dialectical Dupes would be far better and more profitably occupied head-butting a Billy-goat for all the good it will do. [That allegation is easily confirmed; the reader should check this out.]
However, narcoleptic stupor of such depth and profundity -- allied with the serial lack of clarity required to maintain it -- only helps engineer more splits, thus more set-backs and defeats, which in turn creates the need for another sizeable hit.
And so the Dialectical Monster lumbers on into this new millennium.
Small wonder then that Dialectical Marxism is to success what religion is peace on earth.
Social Psychology Doesn't Apply To Dialecticians
As far as the DM-'faithful' are concerned all this will fail to go even in one ear let alone straight out through the other. That is because they refuse to accept that any of the pressures bearing down on the rest of humanity could possibly have any effect on them, the DM-Elect.
Apparently, social psychology doesn't apply to these demi-gods!
Indeed, as far as The Chosen Few are concerned we can totally ignore these famous words (since they don't apply to them):
"In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness." [Marx (1968), pp.181. Bold emphasis added.]
In response, it is often countered that tracing the fondness dialecticians have for Philosophy back to their class origin or current class position is just "crude reductionism!". In stark contrast, however, dialecticians are quite happy to reduce their opponents' theories and beliefs to their class origin or class position, while any attempt to do likewise with respect to their philosophical ideas is rejected out-of-hand -- with a...label.
Here, for example, is Lenin:
"In a word, Comrade Martov's formula will either remain a dead letter, an empty phrase, or it will be of benefit mainly and almost exclusively to 'intellectuals who are thoroughly imbued with bourgeois individualism' and do not wish to join an organisation. Martov's formulation ostensively defends the interests of the broad strata of the proletariat, but in fact it serves the interests of the bourgeois intellectuals, who fight shy of proletarian discipline and organisation. No one will venture to deny that the intelligentsia, as a special stratum of modern capitalist society, is characterised, by and large, precisely by individualism and incapacity for discipline and organisation (cf., for example, Kautsky's well-known articles on the intelligentsia (partially reproduced below -- RL)). This, incidentally, is a feature which unfavourably distinguishes this social stratum from the proletariat; it is one of the reasons for the flabbiness and instability of the intellectual, which the proletariat so often feels; and this trait of the intelligentsia is inseparably bound up with its customary mode of life, and of earning a livelihood, which in a great many respects approximate the conditions of petty-bourgeois existence (working in isolation or in very small groups, etc.). Lastly, it is not fortuitous that the defenders of Comrade Martov's formulation were the ones who were obliged to cite the example of professors and high-school students! It was not the champions of a broad proletarian struggle who, in the controversy over Paragraph 1, took the field against the champions of a radically conspiratorial organisation as Comrades Martynov and Axelrod thought, but the supporters of bourgeois-intellectual individualism, who clashed with the supporters of proletarian organisation and discipline." [Lenin (1976a), pp.87-88. Bold emphasis and links added; italic emphases in the original. I have used the Peking edition here, which differs slightly from the on-line Moscow version.]
Quoting Kautsky on the social psychology of his opponents, Lenin further argued (having referred in the previous paragraph to the ones quoted to the "wishy-washiness of the intellectual"):
"One cannot help recalling in this connection the brilliant social and psychological characterisation of this latter quality recently given by Karl Kautsky. The Social Democratic parties of different countries suffer not infrequently nowadays from similar maladies, and it would be extremely useful for us to learn from more experienced comrades the correct diagnosis and the correct cure. Karl Kautsky's characterisation of certain intellectuals will therefore be only a seeming digression from our theme.
"The problem 'that again interests us so keenly today is the antagonism between the intelligentsia and the proletariat. My colleagues' (Kautsky is himself an intellectual, a writer and editor) 'will mostly be indignant that I admit this antagonism. But it actually exists, and, as in other cases, it would be the most inept tactics to try to overcome the fact by denying it. This antagonism is a social one, it manifests itself in classes, not in individuals. The individual intellectual, like the individual capitalist, may join wholly in the class struggle of the proletariat. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his class, that we shall mainly speak in what follows. Unless otherwise stated, I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual who takes the stand of bourgeois society, and who is characteristic of the intelligentsia as a class. This class stands in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
'This antagonism differs however from the antagonism between labour and capital, since the intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois, and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he is compelled to sell the product of his labour, and often his labour power, and he himself is often enough subjected to exploitation and social humiliation by the capitalist. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
'...Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He does not fight by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability, his personal convictions. He can attain to any position at all only through his personal qualities. Hence the freest play for his individuality seems to him the prime condition for successful activity. It is only with difficulty that he submits to being a part subordinate to a whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the mass, not for the elect minds. And of course he counts himself among the latter....
'...The typical intellectual à la Stockmann regards a "compact majority" as a monster that must be overthrown....'
"Just such flabby whining of intellectuals who found themselves in the minority, and nothing more, was the refusal of Martov and his colleagues to take up their posts only because the old circle had not been endorsed, as were their complaints of a state of siege and emergency laws 'against particular groups,' which were not dear to Martov when the Yuzhny Rabochy and the Rabocheye Dyelo were dissolved, but became dear to him when his own group was dissolved.
"Just such flabby whining of intellectuals who found themselves in the minority was that endless torrent of complaints, reproaches, hints, accusations, slanders, and insinuations regarding the 'compact majority' which was started by Martov and flowed so readily at our Party Congress (and even more so after it)....
"There were bitter complaints of the 'false accusation of opportunism'. Well, they had to do something to conceal the unpleasant fact that it was precisely the opportunists -- who in most cases had followed the anti-Iskra-ists -- and partly these anti-Iskra-ists themselves that formed the compact minority, and convulsively clung to the circle spirit in Party institutions, opportunism in their argumentation, philistinism in Party affairs and the instability and wishy-washiness of the intellectual." [Ibid., pp.160-63. Bold emphases and links added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. I have corrected several typos in the on-line version -- the editors have been informed of these glitches. Again, I have used the Peking edition here, which differs slightly from the on-line Moscow version.]
Trotsky was also happy to do likewise (this time applying the following analysis to those in his own party who opposed him, but failing to do so with respect to those who supported him, or, indeed, himself):
"[Y]ou [James Burnham -- RL], likewise, seek an ideal party democracy which would secure forever and for everybody the possibility of saying and doing whatever popped into his head, and which would insure the party against bureaucratic degeneration. You overlook a trifle, namely, that the party is not an arena for the assertion of free individuality, but an instrument of the proletarian revolution; that only a victorious revolution is capable of preventing the degeneration not only of the party but of the proletariat itself and of modern civilization as a whole. You do not see that our American section is not sick from too much centralism -- it is laughable even to talk about it -- but from a monstrous abuse and distortion of democracy on the part of petty-bourgeois elements. This is at the root of the present crisis....
"Petty-bourgeois, and especially declassed elements, divorced from the proletariat, vegetate in an artificial and shut-in environment. They have ample time to dabble in politics or its substitute. They pick out faults, exchange all sorts of tidbits and gossip concerning happenings among the party 'tops.' They always locate a leader who initiates them into all the 'secrets.' Discussion is their native element. No amount of democracy is ever enough for them. For their war of words they seek the fourth dimension. They become jittery, they revolve in a vicious circle, and they quench their thirst with salt water. Do you want to know the organizational program of the opposition? It consists of a mad hunt for the fourth dimension of party democracy. In practice this means burying politics beneath discussion; and burying centralism beneath the anarchy of the intellectual circles. When a few thousand workers join the party, they will call the petty-bourgeois anarchists severely to order. The sooner, the better." [Trotsky (1971), pp.116-17. Bold emphases and link added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Needless to say, the "few thousand" workers failed to show up. For Burnham's reply to Trotsky, see here.]
"If we exclude that stratum of the intelligentsia which directly serves the working masses, as workers' doctors, lawyers, and so on (a stratum which, as a general rule, is composed of the less talented representatives of these professions), then we see that the most important and influential part of the intelligentsia owes its livelihood to payments out of industrial profit, rent from land or the state budget, and thus is directly or indirectly dependent on the capitalist classes or the capitalist state.
"Abstractly considered, this material dependence puts out of the question only militant political activity in the anti-capitalist ranks, but not spiritual freedom in relation to the class which provides employment. In actual fact, however, this is not so. Precisely the 'spiritual' nature of the work that the intelligentsia do inevitably forms a spiritual tie between them and the possessing classes." [Trotsky, The Intelligentsia And Socialism. Bold emphases added.]
Here is how Trotsky analysed the clique around Stalin:
"The entire effort of Stalin, with whom at that time Zinoviev and Kamenev were working hand in hand, was thenceforth directed to freeing the party machine from the control of the rank-and-file members of the party. In this struggle for 'stability' of the Central Committee, Stalin proved the most consistent and reliable among his colleagues. He had no need to tear himself away from international problems; he had never been concerned with them. The petty bourgeois outlook of the new ruling stratum was his own outlook. He profoundly believed that the task of creating socialism was national and administrative in its nature. He looked upon the Communist International as a necessary evil would should be used so far as possible for the purposes of foreign policy. His own party kept a value in his eyes merely as a submissive support for the machine." [Trotsky (1977), p.97. Bold emphasis and links added. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Here, too, is George Novack:
"Since the theory of historical materialism, which lies at the very heart of Marxism, is the crowning achievement of the bourgeois intellectual, it is no more than an act of historical justice to apply it to the intelligentsia itself.... But the intelligentsia as a highly self-conscious and separate grouping with its own interests and institutions is a peculiar product of bourgeois society and the highly developed division of labour within it....
"Intellectuals are usually (though not necessarily) professionals of one kind of another, teachers, writers, scientists, artists, politicians, etc....
"But, along with the professionalisation of technical training and the institutionalization of branches of learning which reach their highest development in present-day society, there ensues a further specialization. A deep division of labour springs up between the theorists and practitioners of the arts and sciences. Thus we have theoreticians of aesthetics, who have never produced a work of art, and painters who have never given an abstract thought to their work; practical politicians and professors of politics; field scientists and laboratory scientists; experimental physicists and mathematical physicists. There have even been established 'schools of business administration', like that at Harvard, where the art of exploitation is taught in the grand manner, and the science of capitalist apologetics developed to the same refined degree as the scholastics developed Catholic theology.
"Finally, out of the division of labour in the academic domain have emerged entire departments of philosophy and the social sciences, given over to the task of speculating upon the most profound philosophical, historical, and social problems. The professional philosopher is the most consummate expression of the modern intellectual, as the professional theologian was the highest representative of the medieval learned caste.
"The native habitat of the professional intellectual in modern as well as in medieval society is the university. The growth of universities furnishes one of the best indices to the evolution of the intelligentsia. It must be noted in this connection that the leading institutions of learning are usually supported and controlled by the ruling classes, as a centre for the dissemination of their ideas. Plato's Academy was for the sons of the Greek aristocracy, just as Plato's philosophy was the reasoned expression of the world view of the Greek aristocrat. The medieval universities were in the hands of the higher estates of the clergy and the nobility. Oxford and Cambridge have been, since their inception, finishing schools for the scions of the masters of England and training schools for their auxiliaries the clergy and governmental bureaucracy. Today in the United States the capitalist plutocracy controls the purse strings and the faculties of the great privately endowed institutions like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, and Leland Stanford, while the upper strata of the middle classes set the prevailing tone in the state universities.
"...Intellectuals are specialists in the production and propagation of ideas. They constitute the sensorium of modern society, the concentration points where ideologies emerge into consciousness; take systematic shape; and are then diffused through the body politic. In various professional capacities, as teachers, writers, politicians, etc., the intelligentsia disseminates not only scientific knowledge but the ideas which classes entertain about themselves and their aims....
"Because of their economic insecurity, social rootlessness, and mixed composition, intellectuals constitute one of the most unstable, mobile, and sensitive groups in modern society. The mercurial character of their social and intellectual movements make them excellent barometers of social pressures and revolutionary storms. Impending social changes are often anticipated by restlessness among the intelligentsia. The French Encyclopaedists of the eighteenth century who frequented the salons of the nobility and taunted them with the idea of revolution; the Northern abolitionists and Southern fire-eaters; the Communist and Fascist intellectuals, who are beginning to spring up on all sides in the United States today, fight on an ideological plane the battles to be fought in grim reality between opposing classes on the morrow.
"The intelligentsia therefore becomes a microcosm of capitalist society, mirroring in a contracted compass and often in a distorted manner the real conflicts in the world around them. This peculiar character of the intellectuals endows their history with a significance lacking in the development of other professional groups, just as the articulateness (sic) of the intellectuals, and their function as the spokesmen of party and class interests, give their intellectual expressions, and even their political affiliations, an importance disproportionate to their numbers and actual power....
"Whereas the members of real ruling classes base their claim to supremacy upon social position or economic power, this intellectual élite claim the right to rule by virtue of an ability to produce or appreciate works of art, science, or philosophy. Arrogating a superior social status to themselves, they further declare that, as creators, scientists, or philosophers, they have been washed clean of the material motives and class interests that stain their baser fellow citizens. They make a religion of 'art', torn up from its social roots and abstracted from its social milieu, like Flaubert, or a religion of 'science' in the abstract, like Renan, in order to exalt themselves above the vulgar herd. The perennial wish-fulfilment dream of the intellectual to be the monarch of mankind is best embodied in Plato's mythical republic, where the philosopher is king -- and the labouring masses are helots....
"It is said that radical intellectuals are unstable and unreliable allies of the working class. There is a certain element of truth in this accusation. Since, socially speaking, intellectuals form a parasitic group, even the most radical intellectuals may have stronger social and ideological ties with the existing order than they consciously suspect. Long after the umbilical cord is cut and the youth has declared his independence, the mature man is not free from the subtle subconscious influence of his parents. At crucial moments, deep-seated attachments, reinforced by the exceptionally heavy pressure exerted by alien classes, may generate a mood of vacillation in the intellectual, holding him back from decisive action and a sharp break with the bourgeois world....
"The intellectual defenders of reaction usually abandon the attempt to reason out their position in a straightforward logical manner and rely instead upon some substitute for logical and scientific method. Reaction in every sphere of experience, political, artistic and cultural, disparages the intellect as an organ of objective knowledge and leans upon some presumably more fundamental factor such as intuition, blood-sense, tradition, revelation, emotion, etc. This can be seen in all the great reactionary movements in philosophy and politics from the French Revolution to the present lay. Burke's defense of tradition against the implacable logic of bourgeois revolutionists, DeMaistre's brief on behalf of the Catholic Church and the guillotine as the foundation of the state, Carlyle's exaltation of divine inspiration and the strong man, are instances which spring readily to mind. The truth of this observation can best be seen in the Fascist movements of our own time." [Novack (1935). See also Novack (1936). Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Bold emphases and links added. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
While the above is a much more nuanced analysis, Novack nowhere applies the following comment to the DM-classicists or other Marxist intellectuals:
"Arrogating a superior social status to themselves, they further declare that, as creators, scientists, or philosophers, they have been washed clean of the material motives and class interests that stain their baser fellow citizens." [Ibid., bold added.]
As noted earlier, this can only that mean DM-theorists themselves have indeed been "washed clean of the material motives and class interests...", which, alas, affect the rest of humanity.
So, Lenin and Trotsky saw nothing wrong with applying their analyses to the behaviour of, or the ideas formed by, fellow Marxists. But, which Leninist or which Trotskyist today is going to accuse either of those two of "crude reductionism"?
In which case, while it seems quite legitimate for dialecticians to 'reduce' their enemies and opponents' -- and, indeed, some of their fellow Marxists' -- ideas, attitudes and behaviours to their class position, or class origin, it is illegitimate for anyone to do the same to them.
On the other hand, Marxists are quite right to point out that when, for example, union militants are drafted into the trade union machine, becoming bureaucrats themselves, their new material conditions have a predictable effect on the attitudes they adopt and the ideas they form. However, the very same Marxists will resist with no little vehemence the same conclusion when it is applied to them, their material circumstances or their class position.
Or, as a supporter of this site argued a while back:
"Put it this way, the Marxist tradition (the SWP certainly included) has been able to produce a class-based analysis that explains why trade-union bureaucrats tend so strongly towards selling out their members. When a rank-and-file member of a union gains a position in the bureaucracy and begins to ascend through its ranks, s/he discovers that his/her material interests are not the same as those of the rank-and-file members s/he left behind.
"It should not be hard for people who have grasped such analyses to realise that if this is the case for union bureaucrats with solid working-class backgrounds, then it can also be the case (and still more so) for the leaders of revolutionary or other far-left political organisations, where petty-bourgeois backgrounds often predominate. And yet it is hard, because the leaderships of such organisations are understandably reluctant to subject their own positions and interests to the same kind of Marxist analysis they're keen to apply to others. Rosa, I think, has made a brave start on this at her site, and I think her work is worth reading for this (even for readers who don't need immunizing against Dialectics).
"So ensuring RR [Respect Renewal] will not go down the same road as the pre-split Respect is not as easy as shedding Rees and those who followed his orders. The same tendencies will be present in the leadership, because they arise from material conditions rather than from personal character quirks. To counteract this, it would take a strong framework of democratic checks together -- most importantly -- with a membership that habitually insists on exercising democratic control of the organisation on a daily basis, and not just at conference time. It will not be easy to sustain this in the conditions that prevail in this country: workers need confidence to win and maintain democratic control, and a long period of defeats for the class is not conducive to such confidence.
"This is not to say that the open-ended RR project is fatally misconceived. But it is to say that the avoidance of the mistakes made in its predecessor organisation will require constant vigilance on the part of the membership, and in the longer run, revived class struggle in this country to at least the levels France enjoys today." [Quoted from here. Link added. (Unfortunately that link no longer works!)]23a0
If the class analysis promoted at this site is rejected for some reason, the only other conclusion possible is that it must be a sheer coincidence that revolutionary parties the world over have replicated, time and again, practically every single fault and foible that afflicts the genuine god-botherers among us -- even down to their reliance on an obscure book about an invisible 'Being' -- in this case, Hegel's Logic.
So, while all these faults and foibles have well-known material and social causes when they descend upon the duplicitous, the alienated, the superstitious, and the gullible, they apparently have no cause whatsoever when they similarly grace the sanctified lives of our very own Immaculate Dialectical Saints. In which case, faults and foibles like these can safely be ignored, never spoken about in polite company.
Until, that is, The Chosen Ones are caught with their dialectical pants down; even then these "scurrilous accusations" can be brushed aside as "bourgeois propaganda", or as part of a heinous "witch-hunt".
This means that the Dialectical Merry-go-round can take another spin across the Flatlands of Failure, its participants ever more convinced of their semi-divine infallibility and ideological purity.
[As already noted, the above represents about 15% of Essay Nine Part Two. Much of the rest of that Essay is an extended defence of the above, including an analysis of concrete examples where this 'theory'/'method' has helped neutralise, if not cripple Dialectical Marxism.]
~~~~~~oOo~~~~~~
So, what has MS to say in response to what I argued in Exchange #9?
When You're In A Dialectical Pickle, Change The Subject
Again, rather like many other fans-of-the-dialectic with whom I have debated this 'theory/'method' over the last thirty years, MS has adopted one of their favourite tactics: When you're in a corner, change the subject! Instead of defending 'abstractionism', or responding to my criticisms of it, he keeps asking me to explain Marx's theory of value! That means the vast bulk of his latest 'replies' drifted way off topic -- indeed, rather like we have witnessed several times already. MS seems to think that quoting (or sending me photographs of!) passages from Das Kapital, or from other of Marx's works (where Marx also failed to explain with any clarity what he meant by "abstraction", so their relevance is unclear), or sending me passage after passage of jargon-dominated commentary on this material/topic, is an effective response. It isn't.
[MS has again rehearsed ideas from Marx's work with which I largely agree -- that is, those parts that haven't been plastered all over with Hegelian gobbledygook --, and with which I was becoming familiar as long ago as the late 1970s and early 1980s. So, I am not sure why he needs to keep telling me all this. He perhaps thinks that if I question his comprehension of the obscure jargon he uses, I can't have studied Marx!]
However, I have no doubt that, if he responds to this reply, he'll change the subject yet again! As I said, it seems to be an unfortunate compulsion of Hegelian Marxists.
So, what does MS have to say about the 'process of abstraction', or even in reply to my criticisms of it?
Nothing, zero, zilch, zippo, nada, rien...
He once again takes this mythical 'process' for granted. Worse still he ignores my refutation of it. Nor does he explain how he can possibly know what went on in Marx's mind -- which he will have to know, since he, too, thinks this 'process' takes place in the mind. Here is MS from Appendix A:
Let me clarify a few points about the nature of abstractions. For Marx, the term delineates a mental process undertaken by thinking subjects. He did not feel the need justify this procedure epistemologically or metaphysically by offering a theory of truth. Marx thought thoughts happened in that thinking box between the ears called "the mind."
In his own words:
"[T]he method of arising form the abstract to the concrete is the only way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind." (Grundrisse, pg.101)
Tying this claim to failed philosophical attempts to justify "the mind" and, thereby, turning this into an epistemological, metaphysical, or linguistic debate over the nature of a "thinking box" called "the mind" is a cheap philosophical trick. Marx is not some grad school student defending a theory of truth. He is giving a critique of political economy. Thus, he simple takes it for granted that mental functions occur in our heads, instead of in our stomachs or hearts, and gets on with the business of critiquing. I sleep well at night with the same commonplace understanding of thoughts occurring "in the mind," even if I know (as Marx knew) that such a "place" cannot be given a proper philosophical defense. Thought reproduces the concrete "in the brain" expresses the same thing as thought reproduces the concrete "in the mind." [Bold in the original.]
Here is part of my reply that MS completely ignored:
First, I devoted no little space in Essay Three Part One to showing that this is indeed what Marx and subsequent dialecticians mean by the mythical process of 'abstraction', but other than a few vague gestures, we aren't told how this process actually works, or how it avoids the problems raised by Ollman (which were quoted earlier). Once more, I went over this in detail in both Parts of Essay Three. I also spent much time in Essay Thirteen Part Three taking apart the traditional and metaphysical Platonic/Christian/Cartesian theory of 'the mind' that both Marx and MS accept, just as I also heavily criticised the idea that thinking takes place in our heads. I am not going to reproduce here the 100,000+ words I devoted to that topic!
Second, whenever comrades raised such issues with me over at RevLeft, and criticised my (Wittgensteinian) attempt to turn this into a "linguistic debate" I pointed out that they had made the mistake of using language to make that very point! I then encouraged them to try to make the same point but avoid using any language this time. Oddly enough, none of them took me up on that challenge. I am now happy to extend it to MS. [His failure to do so will perhaps convince him that this is an issue over the use of language.]
Here is what Bertell Ollman had to say, which MS also ignored:
As is the case with Ollman, and, indeed, everyone else who has pontificated about this obscure 'process', we aren't told how we manage to do this, still less why it doesn't result in the construction of a 'private language'.
Indeed, this is something Ollman himself pointed out:
"What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work...." [Ollman (2003), p.63. Bold emphases added.]
Well, it remains to be seen if Professor Ollman can solve a problem that has baffled everyone else for centuries -- that is, those who have even so much as acknowledged it exists!
It is to Ollman's considerable credit, therefore, that he is at least aware of it.
[In fact, Ollman is the very first dialectician I have encountered (in over thirty years) who even so much as acknowledges this 'difficulty'! Be this as it may, I have devoted Essay Thirteen Part Three to an analysis of this topic; the reader is referred there for more details.]
Of course, none of this fancy footwork would be necessary if Ollman recognised that even though Marx gestured in its direction, Historical Materialism doesn't need this obscure 'process'..., or, indeed, if he acknowledged that Marx's emphasis on the social nature of knowledge and language completely undercuts abstractionism.
Naturally, this means that this process can't form the basis of 'objective' science (and that remains the case even if we substitute "idealisation" for "abstraction"). Plainly, that is because (i) No one has access to the results of anyone else's 'mental machinations' (or idealisations), (ii) There appear to be no rules governing the production of these abstractions --, or, indeed, governing the entire 'process' itself --, and, as we have just seen, (iii) There is no standard of right, here.
By way of contrast, in the real world agreement is achieved by the use of publicly accessible general terms already in common use, words that were in the vernacular long before a single one of us was a twinkle in our (hypothetical) ancestral abstractors' eyes.
[That is, of course, just a roundabout way of saying that "abstraction" is a highly misleading euphemism for subjective, uncheckable idiosyncratic classification.]
Total silence from MS.
As if silence will make these fatal defects simply vanish.
I also showed that it is impossible for this process to work, which MS ignored, too. I am not going to repeat that material here, either, but readers can re-read it for themselves.
Another bone of contention was my claim that while MS might be an expert at reproducing jargon-laden bodies of text, he finds it impossible to explain himself without using yet more jargon, and then more of the same to 'explain' the last batch. What did MS have to say in reply? You guessed it -- he used yet more jargon!
He has plainly turned his face against this piece of advice from Marx himself:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world...." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold added.]
MS can't in fact take Marx's advice since what he claims to be able to comprehend is itself based on jargon -- terminology drawn from the work of centuries of ruling-class hacks that is also impossible to 'explain', except by the use of even more of the same, and then more of the...
But MS did try to defend himself:
Jargon captures complex ideas in a few words. Let's try lingo: there's no such thing as half-way-crooks when it comes to Hegel or Marx. Both require a lot of explaining because every one of their concepts is a moment in their logical systems. I only used terms Marx uses. And I only use them to save space. Assuming you've read Marx because you are a longtime Marxist is not a crazy assumption. I'm not just 'mouthing words'. Capital is totality...that took Marx about 5,000 pages to (almost or maybe not even almost) complete. I've read all volumes cover[-to-cover] 5 times and certain sections countless times. I'm intimately familiar with the text. Read my Quora answers if you want long form explanations. [Minor typos corrected.]
First, I have indeed been a Marxist for over forty years, and have yet to encounter a clear explanation of the jargon MS and other fans-of-the-dialectic use -- and not just Systematic Dialecticians [SD-ers] -- that doesn't employ yet more jargon to 'explain' the last batch. We never hit bedrock, so to speak. We are left in a dizzying circle of jargon 'explaining' jargon 'explaining' jargon 'explaining'...
In Essay Nine Part Two, I quoted this long passage from Chomsky about the difficulty most readers have in understanding the language used by French Philosophers, since it makes the point rather well about the sort of jargon MS dotes upon (just replace words like "Postmodern", "theory", "deconstruction", and/or "philosophy" with this phrase, "jargon used by SD-ers", "Paris intellectuals" with "fans-of-the-dialectic", "the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict" with "the capitalist economy", and any relevant Proper Name with "Tony Smith" or the names of the other Marxist Mystics listed here); reproduced below in edited form (the original can be read here):
"I've returned from travel-speaking, where I spend most of my life, and found a collection of messages extending the discussion about 'theory' and 'philosophy,' a debate that I find rather curious. A few reactions -- though I concede, from the start, that I may simply not understand what is going on.
"As far as I do think I understand it, the debate was initiated by the charge that I...and maybe others don't have 'theories' and therefore fail to give any explanation of why things are proceeding as they do. We must turn to 'theory' and 'philosophy' and 'theoretical constructs' and the like to remedy this deficiency in our efforts to understand and address what is happening in the world. I won't speak for [others]. My response so far has pretty much been to reiterate something I wrote 35 years ago, long before 'postmodernism' had erupted in the literary intellectual culture: 'if there is a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence has been kept a well-guarded secret,' despite much 'pseudo-scientific posturing.'
"To my knowledge, the statement was accurate 35 years ago, and remains so; furthermore, it extends to the study of human affairs generally, and applies in spades to what has been produced since that time. What has changed in the interim, to my knowledge, is a huge explosion of self- and mutual-admiration among those who propound what they call 'theory' and 'philosophy,' but little that I can detect beyond pseudo-scientific posturing....
"The proponents of 'theory' and 'philosophy' have a very easy task if they want to make their case. Simply make known to me what was and remains a 'secret' to me: I'll be happy to look. I've asked many times before, and still await an answer, which should be easy to provide: simply give some examples of 'a body of theory, well tested and verified, that applies to' the kinds of problems and issues that...I, and many others (in fact, most of the world's population, I think, outside of narrow and remarkably self-contained intellectual circles) are or should be concerned with: the problems and issues we speak and write about, for example, and others like them....
"As for the 'deconstruction' that is carried out (also mentioned in the debate), I can't comment, because most of it seems to me gibberish. But if this is just another sign of my incapacity to recognize profundities, the course to follow is clear: just restate the results to me in plain words that I can understand, and...without...incoherent sentences, inflated rhetoric that (to me, at least) is largely meaningless, etc. That will cure my deficiencies -- of course, if they are curable; maybe they aren't....
"These are very easy requests to fulfil, if there is any basis to the claims put forth with such fervour and indignation. But instead of trying to provide an answer to this simple request..., the response is cries of anger: to raise these questions shows 'elitism,' 'anti-intellectualism,' and other crimes -- though apparently it is not 'elitist' to stay within the self- and mutual-admiration societies of intellectuals who talk only to one another and (to my knowledge) don't enter into the kind of world in which I'd prefer to live....
"...On one side, angry charges and denunciations, on the other, the request for some evidence and argument to support them, to which the response is more angry charges -- but, strikingly, no evidence or argument. Again, one is led to ask why.
"It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand....
"Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. -- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest -- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of 'theory' that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b)...I won't spell it out.
"Again, I've lived for 50 years in these worlds, have done a fair amount of work of my own in fields called 'philosophy' and 'science,' as well as intellectual history, and have a fair amount of personal acquaintance with the intellectual culture in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. That has left me with my own conclusions about intellectual life, which I won't spell out. But for others, I would simply suggest that you ask those who tell you about the wonders of 'theory' and 'philosophy' to justify their claims -- to do what people in physics, math, biology, linguistics, and other fields are happy to do when someone asks them, seriously, what are the principles of their theories, on what evidence are they based, what do they explain that wasn't already obvious, etc. These are fair requests for anyone to make. If they can't be met, then I'd suggest recourse to Hume's advice in similar circumstances: to the flames....
"Some of the people in these cults (which is what they look like to me) I've met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible -- he speaking French, me English); Lacan (who I met several times and considered an amusing and perfectly self-conscious charlatan, though his earlier work, pre-cult, was sensible and I've discussed it in print); Kristeva (who I met only briefly during the period when she was a fervent Maoist); and others. Many of them I haven't met, because I am very remote from these circles, by choice, preferring quite different and far broader ones -- the kinds where I give talks, have interviews, take part in activities, write dozens of long letters every week, etc. I've dipped into what they write out of curiosity, but not very far, for reasons already mentioned: what I find is extremely pretentious, but on examination, a lot of it is simply illiterate..., argument that is appalling in its casual lack of elementary self-criticism, lots of statements that are trivial (though dressed up in complicated verbiage) or false; and a good deal of plain gibberish. When I proceed as I do in other areas where I do not understand, I run into the problems mentioned in connection with (1) and (2) above. So that's who I'm referring to, and why I don't proceed very far. I can list a lot more names if it's not obvious. For those interested in a literary depiction that reflects pretty much the same perceptions (but from the inside), I'd suggest David Lodge. Pretty much on target, as far as I can judge.
"[Some have] found it 'particularly puzzling' that I am so 'curtly dismissive' of these intellectual circles while I spend a lot of time 'exposing the posturing and obfuscation of the New York Times.' So 'why not give these guys the same treatment.' Fair question. There are also simple answers. What appears in the work I do address (NYT, journals of opinion, much of scholarship, etc.) is simply written in intelligible prose and has a great impact on the world, establishing the doctrinal framework within which thought and expression are supposed to be contained, and largely are, in successful doctrinal systems such as ours. That has a huge impact on what happens to suffering people throughout the world, the ones who concern me, as distinct from those who live in the world that Lodge depicts (accurately, I think). So this work should be dealt with seriously, at least if one cares about ordinary people and their problems. The work to which [some refer] has none of these characteristics, as far as I'm aware. It certainly has none of the impact, since it is addressed only to other intellectuals in the same circles. Furthermore, there is no effort that I am aware of to make it intelligible to the great mass of the population (say, to the people I'm constantly speaking to, meeting with, and writing letters to, and have in mind when I write, and who seem to understand what I say without any particular difficulty, though they generally seem to have the same cognitive disability I do when facing the Postmodern cults). And I'm also aware of no effort to show how it applies to anything in the world in the sense I mentioned earlier: grounding conclusions that weren't already obvious. Since I don't happen to be much interested in the ways that intellectuals inflate their reputations, gain privilege and prestige, and disengage themselves from actual participation in popular struggle, I don't spend any time on it....
"To make myself clear, [some of you are] doing exactly the right thing: presenting what [you see] as 'important insights and theoretical constructs' that [one finds] in Foucault. My problem is that the 'insights' seem to me familiar and there are no 'theoretical constructs,' except in that simple and familiar ideas have been dressed up in complicated and pretentious rhetoric.... Unless someone can answer the simple questions that immediately arise in the mind of any reasonable person when claims about 'theory' and 'philosophy' are raised, I'll keep to work that seems to me sensible and enlightening, and to people who are interested in understanding and changing the world.
"[Someone else] made the point that 'plain language is not enough when the frame of reference is not available to the listener'; correct and important. But the right reaction is not to resort to obscure and needlessly complex verbiage and posturing about non-existent 'theories.' Rather, it is to ask the listener to question the frame of reference that he/she is accepting, and to suggest alternatives that might be considered, all in plain language. I've never found that a problem when I speak to people lacking much or sometimes any formal education, though it's true that it tends to become harder as you move up the educational ladder, so that indoctrination is much deeper, and the self-selection for obedience that is a good part of elite education has taken its toll. [The same individual] says that outside of circles like this forum, 'to the rest of the country, he's incomprehensible' ('he' being me). That's absolutely counter to my rather ample experience, with all sorts of audiences. Rather, my experience is what I just described. The incomprehensibility roughly corresponds to the educational level. Take, say, talk radio. I'm on a fair amount, and it's usually pretty easy to guess from accents, etc., what kind of audience it is. I've repeatedly found that when the audience is mostly poor and less educated, I can skip lots of the background and 'frame of reference' issues because it's already obvious and taken for granted by everyone, and can proceed to matters that occupy all of us. With more educated audiences, that's much harder; it's necessary to disentangle lots of ideological constructions....
"A final point, something I've written about elsewhere.... There has been a striking change in the behaviour of the intellectual class in recent years. The left intellectuals who 60 years ago would have been teaching in working class schools, writing books like 'mathematics for the millions' (which made mathematics intelligible to millions of people), participating in and speaking for popular organizations, etc., are now largely disengaged from such activities, and although quick to tell us that they are far more radical than thou, are not to be found, it seems, when there is such an obvious and growing need and even explicit request for the work they could do out there in the world of people with live problems and concerns. That's not a small problem. This country, right now, is in a very strange and ominous state. People are frightened, angry, disillusioned, sceptical, confused. That's an organizer's dream, as I once heard [someone] say. It's also fertile ground for demagogues and fanatics, who can (and in fact already do) rally substantial popular support with messages that are not unfamiliar from their predecessors in somewhat similar circumstances. We know where it has led in the past; it could again. There's a huge gap that once was at least partially filled by left intellectuals willing to engage with the general public and their problems. It has ominous implications, in my opinion...." [Quoted from here. Bold emphases alone added. Spelling adjusted to agree with UK English, formatting and quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Links added. Several paragraphs merged.]
Much of the above is highly relevant to the points I want to make. Indeed, as I argued earlier, the work of 'Academic Marxists' (and I include 'SD-ers' in that category) is, as far as I can see, totally irrelevant to the class war, and absolutely no use at all in helping to organise, propagandise or agitate the working class. And far worse, as Chomsky notes in the penultimate paragraph, Marxist 'intellectuals' have largely abandoned the working class, which now means that more sinister, and far better focussed ideologues of the right and the far right have replaced them, or are actively seeking to do so.
I then added the following:
I have just found this comment on the Internet, which helps explain why so many 'on the left' eagerly consume this stuff (the author, Nathan Robinson, is speaking about the pompous guff that Jordan Peterson exudes, but it also applies to much that rolls off the 'dialectical' production line courtesy of the HCD-industry):
"Sociologist C. Wright Mills, in critically examining 'grand theorists' in his field who used verbosity to cover for a lack of profundity, pointed out that people respond positively to this kind of writing because they see it as 'a wondrous maze, fascinating precisely because of its often splendid lack of intelligibility.' But, Mills said, such writers are 'so rigidly confined to such high levels of abstraction that the "typologies" they make up -- and the work they do to make them up -- seem more often an arid game of Concepts than an effort to define systematically -- which is to say, in a clear and orderly way, the problems at hand, and to guide our efforts to solve them.'
"Obscurantism is more than a desperate attempt to feign novelty, though. It's also a tactic for badgering readers into deference to the writer's authority. Nobody can be sure they are comprehending the author's meaning, which has the effect of making the reader feel deeply inferior and in awe of the writer's towering knowledge, knowledge that must exist on a level so much higher than that of ordinary mortals that we are incapable of even beginning to appreciate it.... The harder people have to work to figure out what you're saying, the more accomplished they'll feel when they figure it out, and the more sophisticated you will appear. Everybody wins." [Quoted from here. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. One link added; paragraphs merged.]
Second, MS says several times that he does in fact understand what he is saying and that he isn't just "mouthing words", as I alleged of him, and, indeed, that he has explained himself:
I promise you I understand what I am saying.... I use words Marx uses.... I've explained Marx's Hegelian understanding of essence multiple times.... Anyone familiar with the text of Capital could understand the points I make above. This is why I get frustrated with you. All of the points I make depend on an understanding of the text, but your criticisms are in abstraction from it. We will never get anywhere if you don't engage the text.... If you're not interested in Marx's critique of political economy, that's fine. I don't expect everyone, even every Marxist, to be as interested as me. But I've told you from the beginning that that is my interest.... When you said I was "mouthing words," or something like that, it really pissed me off because that is not what I am doing. I make a lot effort to explain Capital clearly. I rarely, if ever, use words that Marx didn't use himself. I've spent a lot time and effort reading Capital and secondary literature on Capital. I am not mouthing words. I know everything that I say and I believe what I say to be true.
Well I used to think I understood Kant; as I pointed out earlier:
MS reminds me of those who tell me their theological studies help them understand the world, but when asked for details all we get is a word-salad, and a refusal to face the problems others have raised about such fanciful ideas.
Hegel-groupies also remind me of myself when I was studying Kant's Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals...in my second undergraduate year (1977-78). I was part of a seminar group of philosophy students, and we were sent off with a week to study this work and then attend class the following week prepared to summarise its core ideas. So, geek that I was, I spent hours and hours making page after page of notes on this amazing book ready for that seminar. So, the big day arrived, and the lecturer asked for someone to summarise Kant's key ideas. I was always in the habit of talking too much in such seminars, so I held back, hoping another student would take over. But no one else volunteered, so after a painful minute's silence I raised my hand and volunteered to contribute. The lecturer's face fell..., but she had no other option but to call on me. So, over the next five minutes I unloaded a week's worth of compressed Kant. I regurgitated all those Kantian jargonised terms-of-art like a latter day clone, convinced that I understood this philosopher, the proof being that I could reel off all those Kantian concepts in some sort of plausible order. When I had finished I sat back rather pleased with myself, but the lecturer said "Unfortunately that is typical of those who study Kant and don't actually understand a word of what he is saying." She asked me several searching questions, to each of which I reeled off another barrage of Kantianisms. She again indicated that I had just reeled off load after load of jargon. "What does any of it mean?" she said, shooting me down in flames again. After another four or five such attempts, which received the same smack down, I gave up, rather nonplussed. No one else was going to try after that dressing down, so she proceeded to summarise Kant's main points in crystal clear ordinary language, shorn of all the usual Kantianisms and jargonised philosophical expressions. [Unlike my other tutors and lecturers, she wasn't even a Wittgensteinian. I think it is largely possible to do this with Kant, but not with Hegel, a vastly inferior thinker.]
I learnt a lesson that day that I have never forgotten. I even repeated it in the opening Essay of my site:
These Essays have been written from within a specific current within Analytic Philosophy -- and, it is worth adding, that perspective represents a minority and highly unpopular viewpoint among Analytic Philosophers, too! However, since the vast majority of DM-fans clearly lack any sort of background in this genre, many of the points made at this site have had to be pitched at a very basic level. Professional Philosophers will, therefore, find much here that will irritate them. That, however, is their problem. As I have already noted, this site isn't aimed at them.
In addition, I have endeavoured to write much of this material with the following thought in mind: "If this or that passage isn't accessible to ordinary working people, re-write it!" Now, I don't think for one second that I have everywhere succeeded in achieving that level of clarity or directness, but most of the material at this site has been written and re-written well over fifty times (no exaggeration!) with that sole aim in mind. That process will continue indefinitely. Naturally, it is for members of the target audience (i.e., working people, should they ever read these Essays!) to decide if I have succeeded or failed in achieving my stated aim.
Indeed, and in this regard, I am happy to be judged by them alone.
I am also irredeemably suspicious of those who can't express their ideas without the use of Hegelian, or other jargon drawn from Traditional Thought; and if they can't explain themselves in ordinary language, I refuse to believe they understand what they themselves are banging on about. Sad to say that is also true of my reception of MS's comments. Sure, like other HCDs, MS is an expert at reeling off pages of jargon, and I am sure he thinks he understands it -- just as I thought I understood Kant when I was reproducing all those unfiltered Kantianisms --, but in so far as he can't explain himself in ordinary language (free of all that jargon), and flatly refuses even to face the serious problems which that jargon creates, I just don't believe him. Of course, he can prove me wrong by producing an explanation of, say, "contradiction" (as Hegel thought he was using that word) employing only ordinary language, free of traditional forms-of-thought. He'll be the very first person in over 200 years to do that if he succeeds. [From here. Bold added.]
[Earlier, I have added material from Essay Nine Part Two that explains why fans-of-the-dialectic prefer obscure jargon, and eschew ordinary language.]
Nothing in MS's latest e-mails has prompted me into changing my mind. Quite the reverse, in fact; his jargonised attempts to 'explain' parts of Marx's economic theory have only served to underline the points I made above (now several times). It is therefore painfully obvious that, like so many other fans-of-the-dialectic, MS can't escape from the Hegelian web in which he has become trapped.
Again, as Max Eastman pointed out:
"Hegelism is like a mental disease -- you can't know what it is until you get it, and then you can't know because you have got it." [Eastman (1926), p.22.]
But, what about the claim that MS uses Marx's own words. Sure, but Marx already told us the following:
"[H]ere and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, [I] coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [From here. I have used the punctuation employed in MECW.]
And we already know Marx's "method" and "the dialectic method" was a Hegel-free-zone. [That was established in Exchange #6.]
So, Marx, not Rosa, Marx warned us not to take this jargon seriously.
But, MS has a reply:
If you have studied Capital, then you'd know Marx wasn't coquetting in chapter 4 because it ain't the chapter on the theory of value (ch. 1), i.e., the only place Marx said he was coquetting with Hegelian "expressions," i.e., not the only place he used Hegelian concepts.
MS has perhaps forgotten that I dealt with that very common response earlier:
Some readers might be tempted to point to the following passage from the Afterword to the Second Edition of Das Kapital in support of the idea that Marx was still working under Hegel's influence (but only if put 'the right way up') when he wrote that classic study:
"...I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Marx (1976), p.103. Bold emphasis added. I have used the punctuation found in MECW here.]
However, Marx's use of the word "coquetted" suggests that, at best, Hegel's Logic only exercised a superficial influence on his ideas, confined merely to certain "modes of expression", and limited to just a few sections of Das Kapital (i.e., "here and there")....
Marxist dialecticians often take exception to that interpretation of the Afterword, arguing that all this "coquetting" was, on Marx's own admission, confined to the chapter on value, not the rest of the book. However, that response is far from conclusive.
First of all, the punctuation in MECW (reproduced above) suggests Marx was using the chapter on value as one example among many where he had "coquetted" with Hegel's ideas, but it wasn't the only one.
Second, it would be decidedly odd if Marx had "coquetted" with Hegelian jargon in the most important chapter of the book, but had done so nowhere else. Why pick on only the most important chapter to "coquette" -- i.e., play around -- with such allegedly important concepts?
Third, as far as Marx "openly" avowing himself a pupil of Hegel, he pointedly put that comment in the past tense:
"I criticised the mystificatory side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, at a time when is was still the fashion. But just when I was working on the first volume of Capital, the ill-humoured, arrogant and mediocre epigones who now talk large in educated German circles began to take pleasure in treating Hegel in the same way as the good Moses Mendelssohn treated Spinoza in Lessing's time, namely as a 'dead dog'. I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even, here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the mode of expression peculiar to him." [Ibid., pp.102-03. Bold emphases added. Once more, I have reproduced the punctuation used in MECW.]
This is hardly a ringing endorsement; indeed, it is equivocal, at best. Marx didn't say that he was still a pupil of Hegel, but that he once was.
And we already know that Das Kapital is a Hegel-free zone, since Marx, not Rosa, Marx told us it was.
So, MS's use of Marx's words is no defence, nor does it show he understands a word of the jargon he uses. Of course, it is always possible that he does understand it, but until he translates all that jargon into ordinary language (as Marx himself enjoined), I remain sceptical, as I noted above. But, I have made this point several times, so it doesn't look like MS is able to rise to that particular challenge. If he could, he would have done so by now. No wonder he tries to deflect attention from his predicament. Once again, he is responding like the vast majority of DM-fans have reacted to me over the last 30 years (the reasons for which I explained in the material I posted from Essay Nine Part Two, earlier).
Third, MS argued as follows:
Read my Quora answers if you want long form explanations. [Minor typos corrected.]
Long before I engaged in direct communication with MS, I used to read answers of his devoted to Marxist 'philosophy' and Marxist economics on Quora. These were almost always in answer to questions asked by those who knew little or no Marxist theory, but MS's answers were no less jargon-riddled. I didn't know MS back then, but I concluded that MS was a Marxist version of me in my Kant-jargon days.
Here is an example (slightly edited):
In chapter one, Marx begins with the most simple and abstract categories of capitalist society, the commodity as a bearer of value in simple exchange. He is not offering an empirical or historical recapitulation of how capital(ism) came to be the dominant social structure of modern society. Value, for instance, is not a phenomenal or empirical category. It has no reality in isolation from its form of appearance, money (see section 3 of chapter one). And, as an empirical fact, commodities do not (because they literally cannot) exchange at their values. It is only by simplifying assumption that Marx posits the equal exchange of commodities at their values, i.e., not by empirical observation. This is justified because Marx's intent is not to correctly explain how things appear or should appear. His intent is to explain why things appear as they appear, i.e., in fetishised form (see section four of chapter one).
Interpreting the first chapter under the assumption that Marx is historically grounding capitalism in the pre-capitalist realm of simply commodity production is a common mistake, as well. Engels introduced the term 'simple commodity production' to the Marxian lexicon, but it is nowhere found in Marx's writings. Marx begins in the abstract realm of simple commodity circulation, where abstract individuals exchange equivalent goods based on abstract labor times. The separation of immediate producers from their own means of labor is a necessary condition for the value-form of production and exchange. Hence, historically, there has never been a society of simple commodity producers who exchanged the products of their own labor on the basis of homogenous units of abstract labor time, value. The notion of simple exchange or simple commodity circulation, as it is presented in the first three chapters, is a semblance, a one-sided abstraction (purely formal), a theoretical construct of political economy (i.e., the standpoint of the ‘free trader vulgaris’ pg. 280), which is the object of Marx's critique.
What is Marx doing in the first chapter (and throughout the rest of Capital)? He is giving a rational reconstruction of the capitalist system as a totality, a self-reproducing organic whole. To do so, he systematically moves, step-by-step, from the most abstract categories to the most concrete. His reason for starting with more abstract categories, such as value and simple exchange, is to avoid the errors of the classical and vulgar schools. Accordingly, he concretizes abstract categories by dialectically developing them into discursively richer concepts. This procedure gives order to the chaotic surface movements of capitalist society, "reproduces the concrete in thought" as the “rich totality of many determinations and relations," instead of crudely reproducing the abstract categories as they empirically/immediately appear to the everyday consciousness of the individual (see The method of political economy). In doing so, Marx avoids the two most common mistakes of classical and vulgar political economy, namely -- empty abstractions and Verstand (or "finite") thinking (e.g., Mill's conception of population and Smith's conception of capital). [Quoted from here.]
MS uses obscure jargon as it if were quite natural to do so (since that is what 'genuine philosophers' should do, or so some have been socialised to believe). Notice how MS takes the process of abstraction for granted, as if there were no problems at all with it, no need to explain it. [Not that MS does explain it even when asked, as we have seen in these exchanges.]
That is how far ruling-class ideology has penetrated into the collective DM-mind: their use of traditional jargon is deemed totally uncontroversial, if not quite natural.
Here is what I posted about this in Essay Two:
Traditional A Priori Dogmatics
For over two thousand years Traditional Philosophers have been playing on themselves and their readers what can only be described as a series of complex verbal tricks. Since Ancient Greek times, metaphysicians have occupied themselves with deriving a priori theses solely from the meaning of a narrow range of specially-selected and suitably doctored words. These 'philosophical gems' were skilfully polished and then peddled to the rest of humanity dressed-up as profound-looking truths about fundamental aspects of reality, peremptorily imposed on nature, almost invariably without the benefit of a single supporting experiment.01
In fact, Traditional Theorists went even further; their acts of linguistic legerdemain 'enabled' them to uncover Super-Truths in the comfort of their own heads -- concocting doctrines they claimed revealed the underlying and essential nature of existence, valid for all of space and time. Unsurprisingly, discursive magic of this order of magnitude harmonised rather well with contemporaneous ruling-class forms-of-thought, chief among which was -- and still is -- the dogma that reality is rational.
Clearly, the idea that reality is rational has to be imposed onto nature; it can't be read from it since nature isn't Mind. Plainly, it is much easier to rationalise the imposition of a hierarchical, oppressive and grossly unequal class system on 'disorderly' workers if its ideologues can persuade one and all that the 'law-like' order of the natural world perfectly reflects, and is reflected in turn by, the social order from which their patrons just so happen to benefit, the fundamental aspects of which none may legitimately question.
Material reality may not be rational, but it is certainly rational for ruling-class hacks to claim it is.
Even before the first Marxist Dialecticians put pen to misuse they found themselves surrounded on all sides by ideas drawn from an ancient, hostile ruling-class philosophical tradition. Clearly, this meant that they faced serious problems, one of which was that if they copied Traditional Philosophers and imposed their ideas on nature and society in like manner, they could be accused of constructing just another form of Idealism. On the other hand, if they didn't do this, they wouldn't have a 'philosophical theory' of their own to lend weight to their claim that they alone understand the aforementioned 'fundamental aspects of reality' and hence the motivating forces of social development. That would have the knock-on effect of undermining their right to lead the revolution. Confronted thus by Traditional Thought-forms (which they had no hand in creating, but which they were only too happy to appropriate), DM-theorists found there was no easy way out of this minefield -- or, at least, none that prevented their theory from sliding remorselessly into yet another form of Idealism.
This isn't to argue that dialecticians weren't aware of the Idealism implicit in Traditional Philosophy -- indeed, as George Novack pointed out:
"A consistent materialism cannot proceed from principles which are validated by appeal to abstract reason, intuition, self-evidence or some other subjective or purely theoretical source. Idealisms may do this. But the materialist philosophy has to be based upon evidence taken from objective material sources and verified by demonstration in practice...." [Novack (1965), p.17. Bold emphasis added.]
This echoed Lenin's views:
"The derivation of necessity, causality, law, etc., from thought is idealism." [Lenin (1972), p.192.]
On the contrary, their excuse for disregarding or downplaying the pernicious influence of Traditional Thought on their own ideas was that the materialist flip they say they have inflicted on Hegel's system (putting it 'back on its feet') was capable of transforming theoretical dirt into philosophical gold.
However, as we are about to see, flip or no flip, their own thought is thoroughly traditional: it is (a) dogmatic, (b) a priori, and (c) expressed in jargon lifted straight from The Philosophers' Phrase Book. While few DM-theorists will deny that Traditional Philosophy itself is predominantly Idealist, not one of them has failed to emulate, and then elaborate upon, its dogmatic approach to a priori knowledge.
Despite this, dialecticians still insist that their theory hasn't been imposed on nature, simply read from it.1 Because of this they insist they can not only deflect, they can neutralise the above allegations.
And yet, it is far from clear how any theory could be read from nature or society -- at least, not unambiguously. Not only have countless inconsistent theories been 'inferred from reality/society', the idea itself trades on the misleading metaphor that the world/society a book, or is book-like, and hence that on it, or in it, there have been inscribed countless secrets just waiting for humanity to uncover.
Of course, if it were true that the universe and society had such 'messages' encoded into it, that would imply that it was indeed the product of Mind, and ultimately perhaps that it was just One Big Idea (in development, perhaps). As the record clearly shows, Traditional Philosophers found it difficult to resist just such an inference. That fact is, of course, well-known. Less widely appreciated are the class forces that have encouraged Idealist conclusions like this, even among Marxist Dialecticians.
[The latter will be explored in more detail in other Essays posted at this site -- particularly Nine Parts One and Two, Twelve Parts One to Seven (summary here), and Fourteen Part One (summary here).]
Radical Politics -- Conservative Philosophy
An Ironic 'Dialectical Inversion'
As will soon become apparent, for all their claims to be radical, when it comes to Philosophy DM-theorists are surprisingly conservative -- and universally incapable of seeing this even after it has been pointed out to them!
[An excellent example of this, and one that has been highly influential on how DM-theorists receive and then respond to such criticism has been posted here.]
At a rhetorical level, philosophical conservatism like this has been camouflaged behind what at first sight appears to be a series of disarmingly modest disclaimers, which are then promptly flouted.
The quotations given below (and in Note 1) show that DM-theorists are keen to deny that their system is wholly, or even partially, a priori, or that it has been dogmatically imposed on the world/society, not read from it. However, the way that dialecticians themselves phrase their theories contradicts these seemingly modest-looking denials, revealing the opposite to be the case.
This inadvertent dialectical inversion -- whereby what DM-theorists say about what they do is the reverse of what they do with what they say -- neatly mirrors the distortion to which Traditional Philosophy has subjected ordinary language over the last two millennia (outlined in Essay Three Parts One and Two, and in Essay Twelve Part One), a point underlined by Marx himself:
"The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphasis alone added.]
However, unlike dialecticians, Traditional Metaphysicians were quite open and honest about what they were doing; indeed, they brazenly imposed their a priori theories on reality and hung the consequences.
But, because dialecticians have a novel -- but nonetheless defective -- view of both Metaphysics and FL (on that, see here and here), they are oblivious of the fact that they are just as eager as Traditional Theorists have ever been to impose their theory on the world or on society, and equally blind to the fact that in so-doing they are aping the alienated thought-forms of their class enemy, whose system they seek to abolish.
Naturally, this means that their 'radical' guns were spiked before they were even loaded; with such weapons, is it any wonder that DM-theorists fire nothing but philosophical blanks?
[FL = Formal Logic.]
DM is a conservative theory precisely because its adherents have imported, and then adopted, the distorted methods, a priori thought-forms, theories and meaningless jargon they found in Traditional Philosophy.
For many, the above accusations might seem far easier to make than they are to substantiate.
In fact, the reverse is the case, as we are about to discover.
Given the fact that DM-theorists see contradictions everywhere, one would be forgiven for thinking that they would welcome a few more to add to the list. However, if the past is anything to go by, it is a safe bet that dialecticians won't be too happy with the many that will be brought to their attention in the Essays posted at this site -- especially if the majority of these contradictions show that their theory is not so much consistently inconsistent, as fatally so.
Dialecticians claim that even though their theory/method has been derived from Hegel's system of Absolute Idealism, the materialist flip they say they have imposed on it means that DM isn't the least bit Idealist, it is thoroughly materialist, having been refined and tested in practice for over 150 years.
That is, of course, what the official brochure tells us.
But, is it an accurate picture of DM?
As we are about to see, it is as close to the truth as dodgy Iraq WMD Dossiers were....
[I then quote over two hundred examples (no exaggeration!) of the dogmatic imposition of dialectics on nature and society by the DM-classicists and 'lesser' DM-theorists. Readers are directed to Essay Two for more details.]
Moreover, the passage of MS's quoted earlier isn't an isolated example; here is another:
Let me give another example, one that will hopefully calm any overly-materialistic reader who is getting squeamish over Marx's language of appearances having essences. Take a grain of salt. Its immediate appearance is reducible to a few simple characteristics: white, small, hard, and smooth. If we stopped there, then our empiricism would be rather crude. Salt is something more than what it immediately appears to be. It has an essence, for Marx. But, to be perfectly clear, this is not a Platonic Essence or Form. There is not some Idea of Salt that every sensual grain of salt is a mere appearance of.
Marx's understanding of essence is Hegelian, not Platonic. That is, the essence of salt necessarily appears. There is no essence without appearance for Hegel and Marx; whereas, for Plato, there need not be an actual appearance or material instantiation of goodness for the Idea of the Good to be Real. Simply put, from a Hegelian perspective, the 'given being' of salt does not require some disembodied essence separate from its material existence. Essence necessarily requires a material appearance to be known.
The essence of salt is its 'truth' or 'concept' which requires a more complete rational explanation of its immediately given being as white, hard, smooth, etc. Crude empiricism, or what Marx sometimes referred to as French Materialism, which stops at the appearances, is one-sided. It does not make the object under investigation transparent to reason in its totality. In order to have a complete, scientific understanding of salt, other instruments of knowledge than immediate sensual experience are required (e.g., microscopes, molecular theory, etc.) By using such instruments, we are to able to penetrate the appearances. Salt is no longer one-sidedly understood as nothing but white, hard, smooth, etc. Scientific discovery has shown the essence of salt to be one atom of sodium and one atom of chlorine: NaCl. [From here.]
MS nowhere explains what "essence" means, and he can't do so without using yet more jargon, as already noted.
I have also shown that the Aristocratic distinction between 'appearance' and 'essence' (invented by ruling-class theorists, like Plato, who held the language and experience of ordinary people in contempt, unfortunately echoed in the above) is entirely bogus -- in Essay Three Part Two, here.
[In that Essay, I also deal with the 'scientific' examples to which MS appeals (sunrise, etc.), and show that they don't imply what MS thinks they do. And it is no use appealing to contemporary Chemistry to try to explain the 'essence' of salt, either. Even if it were possible to explain such an 'essence' in chemical or even sub-atomic terms (which I have shown isn't possible, anyway), that would be to no avail. Hegel can't have meant this by 'essence' since he was writing at a time when Chemistry had only just waved 'goodbye' to Alchemy, and scientists knew nothing of molecules, let alone protons and neutrons.]
That, too, isn't the only example:
Accordingly, Marx utilized the form (the rational kernel) of Hegel's dialectical method and discarded its content (the mystical shell) by swapping Hegel's idealism for materialism (turned it right side up). The difficulties of trying to explain how Marx accomplished this are profound, at least to my feeble mind. There is no substitute for sitting down and reading Marx yourself. The dialectic is a working method. It emerges in the process of analysis.
The standard Fichtean/Hegelian triadic structure of thesis -- antithesis -- synthesis is more often something laid over the top of Marx's writings by exegetes, as opposed to the actual working method used by Marx. He was, instead, influenced by Hegel's use of internal contradiction -- a unity made up of two opposing elements -- as the driving force that moved History along....
What Marx means when he says the "concrete is the concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations" is that one cannot begin the analysis of the whole by starting with the concrete whole as the "simple precondition" of analysis. For the concrete whole is itself an abstraction that contains within itself many determinations. Thus Marx, following Hegel, begins by analyzing the abstract determinations, in the mind, and then uses them as the aggregate for building up to the concrete whole.
Just because an abstraction occurs in the mind does not mean it is purely "of the mind." It is always an abstraction of the material world as it appears. But the objects of appearance are rarely transparent to reason in their totality. A commodity on the shelf is investigated much differently than a commodity abstracted in the mind. The commodity on the shelf is pure appearance. Its physical characteristics dominate. The commodity in the mind, looked at from a higher level of abstraction, gets conceptualized into its most general characteristics and has its inner workings examined.
Thus, moving from the abstract to the concrete, in Capital, meant that Marx did not start by examining the concrete whole, a society living en masse under a capitalist mode of production. Rather, he begins with an abstraction of the most general determination in a capitalist society, the commodity. In the course of analyzing the commodity, Marx discovered an internal contradiction. A commodity has both an exchange value (a price) and a use value (it is an object of use). The commodity’s internal contradiction is reconciled through its common element of value, which begins the process again with value as the determination of analysis. The unitary concept of value (understood as socially necessary labor time) is cracked open to reveal itself as a diversity with an internal contradiction: concrete labor (the physical act of value creation) and abstract labor (an economic measure of value creation). This internal contradiction is, in turn, reconciled in the process of exchange (the moment of realization for both abstract and concrete labor).
David Harvey depicts the dialectic of internal contradiction this way:
Hopefully that helps ands doesn't confuse the shit out of whoever reads this. Like I said, reading Capital is the best way to see the dialectic at work. Reading it with Harvey is extremely helpful, too. [From here.]
[I have posted another example of MS using gobbledygook to 'explain' gobbledygook, below.]
Who on earth is going to understand much of the above without a crash course in the use of obscure jargon? Who is going to understand "determinations" (a term not even Hegel could explain!), "concrete whole", "reconciled" (it is human beings who "reconcile" things, so does this imply values are in fact human beings?), and they'll definitely scratch their heads over this prize example: "cracked open to reveal itself as a diversity with an internal contradiction: concrete labor".
Next, the triad, 'Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis', has got nothing to do with Hegel's method, as I have shown here:
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/Thesis_Anti-Thesis_Synthesis.htm
How is it possible for someone who claims to have studied Hegel to make such a sophomoric error?
Be this as it may, MS once more takes 'abstraction' for granted, and doesn't explain how it is even possible, or how it avoids creating a 'private language'. MS also introduces yet another obscure Hegelian term-of-art, "internal contradiction" (which phrase he had declared in an earlier exchange he wasn't interested in using!) and made a weak gesture at explaining it --, namely as "a unity made up of two opposing elements", but he never explains why that is a contradiction to begin with -- when it doesn't even look like one --, let alone how it is "internal".
[Again, I have covered these confused and confusing terms in Essay Eight Parts One, Two and Three.]
I could give many more examples where MS thinks he is explaining himself, but where a wall of jargon stands between him and his readers, and, as we can now see, it even stands between him and himself. I say this again: unless MS can explain himself in ordinary language and refrain from using jargon that hasn't been 'explained' by yet more jargon, it is now reasonably clear he doesn't even understand himself.
[I have already shown that not even Hegel could possibly understand Hegel, here.]
One can only wish him "good luck", since Hegelian jargon has remained unexplained for over two centuries. Certainly, MS has yet to explain it (without using yet more jargon in order to do so).
MS continues:
Tell me where I go wrong in my explanation or offer another one?... I've explained Marx's Hegelian understanding of essence multiple times.... Can you at least point out where you think I go wrong above?
First: I have told MS where he goes wrong; like so many others, he went wrong the moment he imported incomprehensible jargon from Hegel and Traditional Thought into Marxism. I couldn't have been clearer.
Second, and once again: MS thinks he has explained himself, but he is locked in the aforementioned Hegelian circle from which he can't psychologically or logically escape.
Finally, as noted above, it is plain that since MS doesn't understand his own words, I stand no chance. How can I explain anything to him if none of it makes sense (except I repeat what I have said in point one above). And it is no good him telling me over and over again that he has used Marx's words, for reasons I outlined above, here and here.
MS then added this comment:
Marx says shit like this that totally undermines your armchair psychology:
"The finished configuration of economic relations, as these are visible on the surface, in their actual existence, and therefore also in the notions with which the bearers and agents of those relations seek to gain an understanding of them is very different from the configuration of their inner core, which is essential but concealed, and the concept corresponding to it." (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, pg. 311)
Unfortunately, MS failed to say where
I have engaged in "armchair psychology", so it isn't easy to see the relevance
of the above words from Marx.
MS, again (quoting me):
Take the first line of your last response. It has nothing to do [with] systematic dialectics:
"Before I engage with MS once more, I need to underline how difficult it is arguing with fans-of-the-'dialectic'. Some will defend Engels's version of this 'theory'/'method', some will modify it, some will apply the 'dialectic' only to human development (but disagree with others exactly how that works out), others will apply it to both (and then disagree with others over that too)! They all claim they are faithfully representing Marx, and what he argued in Das Kapital, even though that isn't possible."
I am at a loss understanding why MS thought it important to make that point (about the first line), since the entire purpose of the paragraph was to underline how difficult it is arguing with Dialectical Marxists because of the markedly different views they all hold -- the very point that paragraph was attempting to make! Of course, the first line had nothing to do with 'Systematic Dialectics' [SD] (where did I say it had?), but the second line was about SD!
Here is the entire passage, so readers can more fully appreciate the point I was making:
Before I engage with MS once more, I need to underline how difficult it is arguing with fans-of-the-'dialectic'. Some will defend Engels's version of this 'theory'/'method', some will modify it, some will apply the 'dialectic' only to human development (but disagree with others exactly how that works out), others will apply it to both (and then disagree with others over that too)! They all claim they are faithfully representing Marx, and what he argued in Das Kapital, even though that isn't possible. They will berate me for criticising their specific version of this 'theory'/'method' as if I were criticising Marx himself. The overwhelming majority ignore what I have argued -- and many will act surprised when I point this out to them --, even though, in general, I pass comment on the vast bulk of what they argue. As I have pointed out in Essay One:
Another recent ploy is to argue that while it might be the case that I have examined/criticised the ideas of dialecticians A, B and C, I should have looked instead at those of X, Y and Z. Then another comrade will complain that while I might have examined the work of A, B and X, I should instead have concentrated on C, D, and Z! Yet another will then advise me to confine my attention to A, D, and W..., and so on.
Trotskyists complain if I quote Stalin or Mao's writings; Maoists and Stalinists moan if I do likewise with Trotsky's (or even with "Brezhnev era revisionists"); non-Leninist Marxists will bemoan the fact that I haven't confined my comments to the 'dialectic' in Marx's work, or Hegel's, advising me to ignore the confused or "simplistic" work of Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Trotsky!
Of course, because these comrades haven't read my work, none of them know that I have in fact examined the work of A, B, C, D,..., W, X, Y and Z (and that includes Marx and Hegel -- as well as the work of others many of these comrades have never even heard of!). In fact, since most of the material dialecticians produce is highly repetitive (check out Essay Two for scores of examples!), this often means that reading A's work is tantamount to studying almost everyone else's, too!
However, the most common complaint on the Internet from academic, or quasi-academic, Marxists is that I have ignored more substantive theorists, such as Lukacs, Marcuse, Adorno, Habermas, Žižek, Ollman, and the like. [I have explained why I have done this, for example, here.] The work of several of these HCD-theorists will anyway be examined in later stages of this project. [Indeed, parts of Ollman's work have already been examined -- as have Marcuse's and Žižek's.]
As we can now see, what I asserted above is 100% correct about MS and his latest attempt to reply to me:
They all claim they are faithfully representing Marx, and what he argued in Das Kapital, even though that isn't possible. They will berate me for criticising their specific version of this 'theory'/'method' as if I were criticising Marx himself. The overwhelming majority ignore what I have argued -- and many will act surprised when I point this out to them --, even though, in general, I pass comment on the vast bulk of what they argue. [Bold added.]
But there is more:
MS: I am defending a systematic dialectical presentation of categories that is Hegelian in structure. Thought appropriates reality, then presents it. Hegelian logic moves from:
Being: Unity/Immediacy
Essence: Difference/Reflection
Concept: Unity-in-Difference/Truth
This is just another example of MS feeling somehow compelled to quote yet more Hegelian jargon at me, perhaps in the fond hope that if he does this a hundred times, I'll say "Ah, now I get it!" when the previous ninety-nine had fallen on stony ground.
A few remaining points. In an earlier e-mail, MS registered a complaint about my use of Propositional Logic [PL] (which MS calls "statement logic", a term I'd never use for the same reasons given by Frege and Wittgenstein). Here is what he also said (slightly edited):
MS (responding to my claim that he dogmatically imposes his ideas on society);
"Nothing I've said is dogmatic. Everything I've said comes directly from Marx. He has spelled out everything I've said in 3 Volumes of Capital. You constantly do this cheap trick of calling summations dogmatic. It's absurd. Please tell me exactly what I've said that is dogmatic (not backed by Marx's Capital)? The only way my explanations could appear dogmatic is that you do not have the requisite background knowledge of Capital to know that Marx called capital a 'substance' and a 'self-moving substance.' Marx said the capital 'subsumes' material things to its purposes, and only insofar as things are subsumed under capital are such things capital. Marx called capital a 'moving contradiction.' Read Marx if want a long form argument. Don't call me dogmatic for repeating what Marx said in short form. Your problem is with Marx, not me or Hegel. I've been working under the assumption you think Marx's explanation of capital is correct. Apparently, I was mistaken."
[Added on Edit: The following is my e-mail response to the above (again, slightly edited).]
(1) Perhaps appropriately, you have just contradicted yourself, since your last e-mail says both you and Marx were being dogmatic.
(2) I have called your attempts to explain Marx "dogmatic". You are the one who called Marx dogmatic, not me. [Added on edit: MS did this in an earlier e-mail.]
(3) I explained why you have been dogmatic. You assert things using obscure Hegelianised jargon (which you struggle to explain, except you blame me for your failure to do so, or you 'explain' it with yet more obscure Hegelianised jargon, just as I predicted), which you neither prove exist nor even attempt to prove exist. I suspect you think that if you use complicated words I will accept that as proof, when you just assert such things. So you use phrases like "self moving substance" as if to intimidate me. You also help yourself to "contradiction" which you have yet to explain (see below). The use of obscure jargon is characteristic of dogma. It stands like a wall between a theorist and comprehension, and which serves in the place of clarity and understanding. As I pointed out to you, if you can't explain yourself without using such dogmatic, obscure jargon, not even you understand what you are saying. You're just mouthing words, a bit like a Pentecostal ecstatic, except using what look like English words.
(4) Marx told us he was merely 'coquetting' with such jargon, so it might be wise if you ignored it. He didn't mean it seriously, neither should you. You struggle to explain such words since you have ignored what he told us. And so it will continue; you can't fail to struggle to explain yourself while using anything taken from that Christian Mystic, Hegel. The fact that he was a mystic should have been a clue.
(5) No, my problem is with you using obscure jargon that you can't explain -- and neither could Hegel. Neither can any Hegel commentator I have read in the last 40 years. So, it is no surprise to me that you can't explain yourself. I predicted it and will continue to predict you will struggle in this way. Your problem is that you ignored Marx when he recommended we return to the use of ordinary language, and then you are perplexed, or act surprised, when I point out that you can't explain a single thing while using philosophical jargon. And so this will also continue until you follow his advice and resist the temptation to keep mystifying Das Kapital with Hegelianised terminology. And then you blame me for your failures!
(6) I am a Marxist, so I accept Marx's explanation of capitalism, providing we follow his lead and rid it of all traces of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up'). I have pointed you toward an interpretation of Das Kapital that I accept (with suitable changes) -- i.e., John Rosenthal's The Myth of Dialectics.
MS: "You try to reduce everything to statements and statement logic."
(7) What has any of this got to do with the Propositional Calculus? Is that all you know about logic? Have you never heard of the Predicate Calculus? If I were to use 'statement logic', you'd soon know, you'd see things like this (these come from Essay Five):
C1: ¬[(p → q) v (p → r) ↔ (p → (q v r))].
C2: ¬[¬(Ex)(Fx & ¬Gx) ↔ (x)(Fx → Gx)].
(8) If we can't understand single sentences, we stand no chance
with larger bodies of text. You struggle with single words (like
"contradiction"), for goodness sake!
(9) Where have I reduced anything? All I have done is ask you to explain your use of certain words, which you have yet to do. I gave an illustration of what I meant by "contradiction". You are certainly free to reject it and adopt your own understanding of that word (not that you need my permission or acquiescence). All I ask is that you explain yourself so that I can follow what you are trying to say. Until you do, you might just as well use "schmontradiction" for all the good it does; and until you do, it is appropriate for me to point out that not even you understand what you are saying. Churning out jargon doesn't count as comprehension, nor does it foster it. Now it might be that you can explain this odd use of "contradiction" (but you will be the first person in history who has done this, so I can understand your reticence and [why you] are trying to avoid the subject, and, indeed, deflect from it), but, if so, it might be wise to keep that explanation to yourself no longer.
Here is another classic example of a dogmatic statement:
MS: "Capital is a social relation that constitutes itself through things by subsuming them to its purposes."
Instead of explaining what you mean, you assert the problematic phrase itself once more and try to account for it with other obscure words. Nor do you even attempt to explain how something could be comprised of relations and still be a relation itself.
You also now appear to want to anthropomorphise capital by thinking it can have purposes (your word, not mine)! Really? Do you really think capital is conscious, and can engage in goal-directed behaviour? See what I mean by mystifying Marx? You have to attribute to capital mysterious powers that only a human being can possess. Asserting this is an example of dogma -- that is, until you can show capital is conscious and can engage in intentional behaviour it is mere dogma baldly to assert such things. Otherwise why use a term that, in this context, is at best misleading, at worst mysterious.
I am still waiting for you to tell me how capital can also be a "fallacy", that is, that it can also be an argument. You'll be telling me next that capital can do card tricks and recite the Gettysburg Address.
MS: "Capital emerges as a social reality only under certain conditions (i.e., capital owning the objective conditions of labor, controlling the production process, exploiting propertyless wage labor, valorizing value). When those social conditions obtain, then material things become capital. When those social conditions do not obtain, the exact same material things are not capital. I explained this in reference to a machine."
Ok, that is crystal clear, but how that explains how capital can be comprised of relations and be a relation at the same time is still unclear.
MS: "The commodity-form. Read Chapter 1 of Capital. The value character of a commodity is in contradiction with its use-value character, its social form with its material form. This is not a contradiction of duelling propositions. It is social reality that is internally divided, fraught with conflict and difference."
I agree that capitalism is as you say, but how is that a 'contradiction'? That you have yet to explain. For all the good this does, you might just as well have written the following:
"The commodity-form. Read Chapter 1 of Capital. The value character of a commodity is in schmontradiction with its use-value character, its social form with its material form. This is not a contradiction of duelling propositions. It is social reality that is internally divided, fraught with conflict and difference."
So I am still waiting for the following:
(a) A clear explanation of your use of "contradiction". What do you mean by this word?
(b) An explanation of how something can both be comprised of relations and still be a relation.
(c) How capital can be a "fallacy".
To which we can now add:
(d) How can capital have "purposes"?
These won't go away by the simple expedient of ignoring them....
Here is his reply to my point about Propositional Logic [PL]
MS: You do use propositional logic on your site quite a bit. In fact, Ps and Qs are found more often than words such as "value" or "commodity" or "money" or "capital" or "price of production"....like, you know, the concepts Marx dealt with. [Typo corrected.]
First, MS is still labouring under the illusion that my site was set up to explain Marxist economics. It wasn't. It was set up with the sole purpose of exposing the incoherence of Dialectical Marxism at every level, in the course of which I naturally have to address several side-issues; but even then, explaining Marxist economics wasn't one of them. If MS is dissatisfied with that, that is something I will just have to bear with fortitude. If he thinks I don't accept Marx's economics or can't explain it, I will have to live with that, too. I am not going to go down that rabbit hole. I have told MS this several times, so his repeated attempts to re-direct the discussion can be seen as an attempt to deflect from his own incapacity to explain the obscure jargon he feels compelled to use --, or, indeed, provide a clear account of the mysterious 'process of abstraction'.
Second, MS is still perseverating about PL, and seems not to know anything about Predicate Logic [PrL] (which appears at my site about as much as PL, i.e., very little). As I noted in Essay Four Part One:
I have endeavoured to keep this Essay as simple as possible, minimising the sort of technicalities normally found in modern logic, since -- sad to say -- most dialecticians appear to know little or no logic, and seem to care even less about that fact. This can be seen from the crass things they say about it; even academic Marxists slip up in this regard -- on that, see here. In which case, the indulgence of those who know their logic will be required; anyway, this Essay hasn't been written with them in mind. Anyone who wants to read more substantial accounts of the approach to logic and language I have adopted in this Essay should consult the many works I have referenced in the End Notes and in other Essays posted at this site. [Bold emphasis added.]
Third, apart from Essay Four (which is specifically devoted to the 'troubled relationship' between dialecticians and Formal Logic [FL]), PL and PrL make rare appearances in my other Essays, and they make no appearance at all in Essay Nine Part One in connection with my demonstration that Das Kapital is a Hegel-free zone, indeed, as I pointed out to MS. So why he made the above point is still a mystery.
I relation to this comment of mine:
Marx told us he was merely 'coquetting' with such jargon, so it might be wise if you ignored them. He didn't mean them seriously, neither should you. You struggle to explain such words since you have ignored what he told us. And so it will continue; you can't fail to struggle to explain yourself while using anything taken from that Christian Mystic, Hegel. The fact that he was a mystic should have been a clue.
MS replied:
Not acknowledging this anymore. It's unhelpful.
That is otherwise known as "burying your head in the sand". We have seen this is yet another favoured tactic of fans-of-the-'dialectic'.
In response to the following:
I am a Marxist, so I accept Marx's explanation of capitalism, providing we follow his lead and rid it of all traces of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up'). I have pointed you toward an interpretation of Das Kapital that I accept (with suitable changes) -- i.e., John Rosenthal's The Myth of Dialectics.
MS replied:
Rosenthal doesn't offer anything close to a complete reading of Capital in his book from what I can tell. Kinda hard to base your reading on something so threadbare.
MS admits he hasn't read Rosenthal's book, so I think we can take his opinion of it with a bucket of salt. Moreover, I nowhere said I "based" my "reading" on this book, just that it was one account of Das Kapital I'd accept (with suitable changes). In fact, I base my reading of Das Kapital on what Marx himself said -- which, even now, MS largely ignores. Here it is again (heavily edited) alongside my comments:
Some have pointed to Marx's own words -- where he refers to "the dialectic method" -- in order to counter the above allegations. The question is, of course: what did Marx himself --, not others -- what did Marx himself mean by that phrase?
Well, we needn't speculate. Marx very helpfully told us what he meant by it in that very same Afterword to the Second Edition. There, he quotes a reviewer in the following terms:
"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:
'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence....As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has.'
"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
In the above passage, not one single Hegelian concept is to be found -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality", no "universal change" --, and yet Marx still calls this the "dialectic method", and says of it that it is "my method".
So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two, "here and there", with which he merely "coquetted".
In that case, and once more, Marx's "dialectic method" more closely resembled that of Aristotle, Kant and the Scottish Historical School.
Notice, too: Marx isn't here referring to a "dialectic method", nor yet merely part or one aspect of "the dialectic method", but "the dialectic method". Even more significant, this is the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life.
Moreover, Marx's published words carry far more weight than do his unpublished musings. So, unlike the vast majority of Marx's epigones, I begin with this passage when I want to understand Marx --, since it tells us what Marx himself, not anyone else, what Marx himself considered his "method" to be -- and I interpret everything else Marx said about 'dialectics' in that light.
Mysteriously, those who claim to be Marxists refuse to do this! In fact, they almost totally ignore both this passage and what Marx said about it. Indeed, many of them severely criticise me for paying any heed to it!
It is worth repeating the following, in larger print:
This is the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life.
But clearly, and in flat contradiction to what he said earlier, Marx's own words aren't good enough for MS.
Unlike MS, I "base" my reading of Das Kapital on this.
As I have already pointed out: MS will need to locate a version of the "dialectic method" -- published and endorsed by Marx himself, contemporaneous with or subsequent to the second edition of Das Kapital --, that supports his mystical interpretation of Marx's economic theory. That is the bottom line. Nothing else will do it for me. Period.
Oh wait! There isn't one...
In reply to the following comment of mine:
If we can't understand single sentences, we stand no chance with larger bodies of text. You struggle with single words (like "contradiction"), for goodness sake!
MS had this to say:
That's grand.
If MS wants to be taken seriously, he will have to do much better than that.
In response to this comment of mine:
Where have I reduced anything? All I have done is ask you to explain your use of certain words, which you have yet to do. I gave an illustration of what I meant by "contradiction". You are certainly free to reject it and adopt your own understanding of that word (not that you need my permission or acquiescence). All I ask is that you explain yourself so that I can follow what you are trying to say. Until you do, you might just as well use "schmontradiction" for all the good it does; and until you do, it is appropriate for me to point out that not even you understand what you are saying. Churning out jargon doesn't count as comprehension, nor does it foster it. Now it might be that you can explain this odd use of "contradiction" (but you will be the first person in history who has done so, so I can understand your reticence and are trying to avoid the subject, and, indeed, deflect from it), but, if so, it might be wise to keep that explanation to yourself no longer. [Bold added.]
MS replied:
I've offered thousands of words explaining Marx and Capital. You've offered zero. Not figuratively zero. Literally zero. Mind blowing. You run to your logical safe space and away from Capital every time.
Readers will no doubt notice that MS totally ignored the words highlighted in bold in my comment. I am sure they will be able to draw the appropriate conclusion.
In reply to this comment of mine:
I am still waiting for you to tell me how capital can also be a "fallacy", that is, that it can also be an argument. You'll be telling me next that capital can do card tricks and recite the Gettysburg Address.
MS made this (national chauvinist!) comment:
Maybe it's the stiff-lipped Brit in ya..."Capital is fallacy" is flippant way of saying capital is false reality or totality. Again, I've gone into this before. Capital is a false totality because it requires wage labor and nature to reproduce itself, but it fails to absolutely subsume wage labor and nature to its own purposes.
Of course, that is no help at all, since it is even less clear how something can be a "false reality", or even a "false totality". As I pointed out in Essay Five, but in relation to other serious problems DM-fans face, but which applies equally here:
Of course, no one believes these ridiculous conclusions, but there appears to be no way of avoiding them if all we have to hand are the radically defective, recklessly meagre conceptual and logical resources Hegelian dialectics supplies its unfortunate victims -- compounded by their cavalier misuse of ordinary language.
No wonder MS struggles to explain himself and deflects blame on to me. MS has turned his back on the rich logical and analytic resources we now have available to us, a bit like the Aristotelians turned their backs on the new methods and concepts Descartes, Galileo and Newton introduced four centuries ago. But, if experience is anything to go by, he will continue to do this, since dialecticians cling to this 'method'/'theory' for non-rational reasons (exposed above).
In reply to the following comment of mine:
You also now appear to want to anthropomorphise capital by thinking it can have purposes (your word, not mine)! Really? Do you really think capital is conscious, and can engage in goal-directed behaviour? See what I mean by mystifying Marx? You have to attribute to capital mysterious powers that only a human being can possess. Asserting this is an example of dogma -- that is, until you can show capital is conscious and can engage in intentional behaviour it is mere dogma baldly to assert such things. Otherwise why use a term that, in this context, is at best misleading, at worst mysterious.
MS had this to say:
I seriously question if you've read Marx after claims such as this. Capital is the personification of capital. Marx does not deal in persons in Capital. He deals in the logical categories that stand in for persons. This is 101 stuff, Rosa. The concept of capital has logical necessity. Its purposes are determined by its concept, which Marx describes self-valorizing value. Marx, not me. Marx....
First, readers will no doubt note that my earlier predictions have been amply fulfilled: MS just can't explain himself without the use of yet more jargon, which he also leaves (you guessed it), unexplained. What on earth does "Capital is the personification of capital" mean? And the following comment is an open admission that capitalism has been anthropomorphised: "He [Marx] deals in the logical categories that stand in for persons", which is precisely what I alleged. MS also failed to quote Marx to support his contention that that is what Marx was doing, so this looks like yet another invention on MS's part.
Second, what on earth does "The concept of capital has logical necessity. Its purposes are determined by its concept..." mean? Apparently, according to MS, capital is conscious after all, and can perhaps think for itself. I suspect we can all now see that the alleged rotation of Hegel through 180º, so that he supposedly stands "the right way up", was in fact through the full 360º. This is the mysticism that comrades like MS want to introduce into Marxism, since it is now a complete mystery how an economic system can have purposes or intentions, or even how a "concept" can "determine" anything. Instead of human beings, we have "concepts" running the show! Pure, unadulterated Idealist mysticism.
There then follows a long section of MS's e-mail that attempts to 'explain' all this, but once again what we are presented with is yet another dose of obscure Hegelianised jargon 'explaining' the last batch -- as we have become accustomed. [I have added it to Appendix B, so that neutral readers can assess it for themselves.]
In response to the following:
Ok, that is crystal clear, but how that explains how capital can be comprised of relations and be a relation at the same time is still unclear.
MS had this to say (minor typos corrected):
Capital is Marx's word for a social relation that constitutes itself through a process. Capital is a process whereby the personification of capital, a capitalist, takes money and purchases means of production and labor power. Those means of production and labor power are used to produce commodities with more value than the value it cost to purchase the means of production and labor power. This is extra value is called surplus-value. In order for the surplus-value, which only exist ideally in the newly produced commodities, to be realized, a monetary exchange is necessary. Once the newly produced commodities are sold for money, capital can start the process over again.
Capital takes the form of money and then commodities (mean of production and labor power) and then money again. What makes this possible is the social relation of capital and wage labor. Capital, the objective conditions of labor, finds labor power, the subjective condition of labor, ready to hand at the end of the process. This social relation allows the movement of capital to take place.
This is 101 shit, Rosa. Have you read Volume 2? I feel like it's a waste of time typing it, which takes a lot of my time cause I suck at typing.
First, it now appears to be the case that "capital" is no longer a "personification of capital" (as we were told earlier), but it is the capitalists who are the personification of capital. That would certainly explain how there can be purposes involved in the system, but it is still unclear how capital itself can have purposes. I am far from sure about this, but that might be an example if The Compositional Fallacy -- for example, arguing that because capitalists have purposes, capital itself has purposes. That's like arguing, atoms are microscopic therefore anything made of atoms is microscopic.
Second, I read the rest of the above remarks, which were admirably perspicuous (mainly because the ubiquitous Hegelian jargon was absent), but how it makes it clear that capital can be a relation and be composed of relations is still far from obvious. I certainly agree that capitalism is composed of relations (between human beings, etc.), but it has yet to be made clear to me how capital itself can be composed of relations and at the same time be a relation.
Here is a relation reflected by a relational expression (i.e., "ξ is larger than ζ"):
R1: A is larger than B. [Where "A" and "B" stand for singular terms -- i.e., Proper Names or Definite Descriptions.]
R2: Ψ(ξ,ζ).
[I have explained the use of symbols like these, here. This isn't PL, or even PrL, it is part of Relational Logic [RL], something that neither Aristotle nor Hegel knew anything about. In fact, RL is little over a century old.]
[PL = Propositional Logic; PrL = Predicate Logic.]
The relation is: A being larger than B. It is far from clear how that relation itself can also be composed of relations. Whatever A or B stand for might themselves be composed of relations, but how can the relation itself be composed of anything? A relational expression (which, as the phrase suggests, expresses the intended relation) reflects a connection between the relata involved, it isn't itself composed of anything. Asking what a relation is made of is as nonsensical as asking what tallness or largeness is made of.
Here is something, a workers' picket, composed of relations (expressed by a series of relational expressions):
R3: The picket was formed by a1, stood next to a2, stood next to a3, stood next to..., ai,..., stood next to an. [Where ak stands for the Proper Name of an individual, one of the said pickets.]
Now, it might be easy to see how capital is comprised of relations like we see in R3 (but in a much more complex way, obviously), but MS has yet to explain how it can also be a relation, like we see in R1/R2. Perhaps he means capital expresses a relation held between this or that? Or that capital comes into being when human beings enter into certain relations? Even then, it is still hard to see how it can also be a relation. Nothing MS has so far said has made this one iota clearer.
In response to this comment of mine:
Finally, I agree with much that is expressed in the following passage MS quoted from Werner Bonefeld:
For the critique of political economy, economic nature is not the essence of economics. The essence of economics is society, and society is the social individual in her social relations. The circumstances that Man in her social relations appears as the personification of economic things -- a bearer of economic laws -- focuses the critique of political economy as a negative theory of society. In capitalism, Marx argues, the individuals are governed by the product of their own hands and what appears thus as economic nature is in fact a socially constituted nature that belongs to definite social relations. Social reality is this 'objective appearance': the social individual vanishes in her social world only to reappear in her price tag, by which she is governed. Yet this inversion of the social subject into the economic object is her own work. It does not derive from some abstract economic matter that objectifies itself in the acting subject, as if by a force of nature. For the critique of political economy the critical issue is thus not the discovery of general economic laws of history. Rather, its object of critique is the existent society, in which definite social relations subsist in the form of abstract economic forces, things endowed with an invisible will that 'asserts itself as a regulative law of nature' (Capital, pg. 168).
Except I'd strike out terms like the following: "a bearer of economic laws", "objective appearance", and "abstract economic forces", among others.
MS had this to say:
Last thing. I was soooooooo perplexed when, at the end of the last response, you said you agree with the Bonefeld paragraph (after spending all that time disagreeing with me). I honestly feel like you're fucking with me or you don't understand what he or I are saying. Because we are saying the same thing.
It isn't easy to see why MS is mystified; Bonefeld summarised key ideas found in HM, and if the words I highlighted (and on reflection I should also have included the word "essence") are replaced with ordinary terms where possible (or are omitted), I could have written it myself. It seems MS still can't see that it is the Hegelian jargon to which I am taking exception, so I have criticised him for that.
I don't disagree with him over his interpretation of Das Kapital since in order to do that I would have to be able to make sense of his use of jargon in that interpretation, but that I can't do because I can make no sense of his use such obscure terminology. In order to agree or disagree with someone -- like I can say I agree with Bonefeld, given the above qualifications -- one has to be able to understand their words. I can't understand the Hegelian gobbledygook MS keeps using, and I don't think he understands it either, as I have argued above.
MS said he would answer other points I raised in a later e-mail, which has yet to arrive, well over a month later.
Exchange #11 -- 17/06/2020
I have to say I didn't expect a response to the above, so this e-mail message from MS came as a surprise; but then again, given its desultory and dismissive content, it was in fact no surprise (I've read stuff like this about me and my ideas scores of times (on the internet) for nigh on fifteen years). Again, I'm not complaining, I expect it, and if I didn't receive any I'd only conclude I had gone wrong somewhere, so I can only thank MS for reverting to type, as I always knew he would:
I got upset because you don’t understand Marx which causes you to insult people who do.
Your project has a flaw. You attack people for falsely defending a body of knowledge (Marxism) that you are unable to demonstrate the truth of yourself. Instead of explaining what Marx said, you attack what others said about Marx on philosophical grounds. But if you don't have an explanation of Marx yourself, then how could you possibly know if what they are saying isn't exactly what he said? You can't. So you end up being this anti-Marxist Marxist without knowing what you're doing. If your criticisms hold, Marx was a fu*king idiot. You can't see this [because] you're so caught up in attacking a certain type of Marxist instead of trying to understand Marx.
I have a long response (written awhile ago). It is insulting towards you [because] I feel you are insulting towards me. I don't care [to] share it. I don't care to insult you. Maybe I'll clean it up and make it less personal.
I consider you a friend. But we have different views on the point of debate. You're on a crusade. I'd rather connect and learn.
Readers will perhaps appreciate how prophetic I was (well, it wasn't a prophecy, it is just based on my experience of hundreds of weak put-downs I have received from Dialectical Mystics, to such an extent that I could write this material well before any of them bashed away at their keyboards (since they all say the same things!) -- a long list of similar attempts to reply to me, alongside the rather pathetic excuses DM-fans come out with when they find they can't defend their ideas, can be found in the first few End Notes to Essay One), when I posted this in Exchange #9, and repeated it in Exchange #10:
Before I engage with MS once more, I need to underline how difficult it is arguing with fans-of-the-'dialectic'. Some will defend Engels's version of this 'theory'/'method', some will modify it, some will apply the 'dialectic' only to human development (but disagree with others exactly how that works out), others will apply it to both (and then disagree with others over that too)! They all claim they are faithfully representing Marx, and what he argued in Das Kapital, even though that isn't possible. They will berate me for criticising their specific version of this 'theory'/'method' as if I were criticising Marx himself. The overwhelming majority ignore what I have argued -- and many will act surprised when I point this out to them --, even though, in general, I pass comment on the vast bulk of what they argue. [Bold added.]
And here we see it again; they can't defend their ideas so they resort to abuse and personal attacks.
Here, MS has the temerity, if not the arrogance, to equate his mystical version of Marx's economics with Marx's own, non-mystical theory, and waxes indignant when I point this out to him -- exactly as predicted.
As I note in the material I posted in Exchange #10 (which MS clearly hasn't read -- also as predicted!):
Each Dialectical Disciple acts as if he/she alone has direct access to the exact meaning of the dialectic (here is an excellent recent example of this syndrome), uncannily mirroring the individualism that underpins Protestantism wherein believers are required to work out their own salvation in 'fear and trembling' by means of a thorough study of the Bible, allied to endless disputation. This also helps account for the interminable dialectical debates over vacuous Hegelian concepts (rather like those that exercised the Medieval Schoolmen): for example, whether this or that thesis is "abstract", "positivist", or "one-sided", or whether 'opposites' are 'united' or 'identical' --, or, indeed, whether "motion precedes matter"..., or is it the other way round?20
This also helps explain why each DM-supplicant thinks that no one else really "understands" the dialectic like they do, or as well as they do.
[Since no one does in fact understand it (on this, see Essay Nine Part One), that is a very easy claim to make -- and one no less difficult to disprove.]
Every opponent is now tarred with the same brush (on this, see below, as well as here): all fail to "understand" the dialectic -- that is, all except the blessed soul that made that rather bold claim!
Just like the Old Testament Prophets, it is almost as if these individuals have received a personal visit from the 'Self-Developing Idea' itself.
Indeed, The Road to Damascus and The Road to Dialectics have more in common than just a capital "D".
All this explains why, to each DM-acolyte, the dialectic is so personal, so intimately their own possession, and why you can sense the personal hurt they feel when it is comprehensively trashed, as it has been at this site. [For two excellent recent examples of this malady, check out these two incoherent videos.]
Hence, any attack on this 'precious jewel' is an attack on the revolutionary ego itself and will be resisted with all the bile and venom at its command.
And that explains, too, all the abuse you, dear reader, will receive if you think to challenge the Dialectical Doctrines of a single one of these Hermetic Head Cases.
It's as regrettable as it was predictable that MS has now joined this merry band of Hermetic Head Cases.
I won't say any more. Anyone who has read through the material I posted to Exchange #10 will no be able to see MS for the Dialectical Martinet he is.
MS has yet to reply to Exchange #10, but he has sent me a long and largely irrelevant reaction to about 1% (!!) of my earlier replies to him. I will confine my response to the relevant sections of his lengthy e-mail. I have posted most of it to Appendix D so readers can judge for themselves how MS has once again fired mostly blanks, and what few live rounds he sets off miss the intended target by an embarrassingly wide margin. The rest of his reply (which was itself completely irrelevant to this discussion) has been posted to Appendix E. Readers can judge for themselves if I am being unfair in saying that.
I added these comments to Exchange #10:
Again, rather like many other fans-of-the-dialectic with whom I have debated this 'theory/'method' over the last thirty years, MS has adopted one of their favourite tactics: When you're in a corner, change the subject! Instead of defending 'abstractionism', or responding to my criticisms of it, he keeps asking me to explain Marx's theory of value! That means the vast bulk of his latest 'replies' drifted way off topic -- indeed, rather like we have witnessed several times already. MS seems to think that quoting (or sending me photographs of!) passages from Das Kapital, or from other of Marx's works (where Marx also failed to explain with any clarity what he meant by "abstraction", so their relevance is unclear), or sending me passage after passage of jargon-dominated commentary on this material/topic, is an effective response. It isn't.
[MS has again rehearsed ideas from Marx's work with which I largely agree -- that is, those parts that haven't been plastered all over with Hegelian gobbledygook --, and with which I was becoming familiar as long ago as the late 1970s and early 1980s. So, I am not sure why he needs to keep telling me all this. He perhaps thinks that if I question his comprehension of the obscure jargon he uses, I can't have studied Marx!]
However, I have no doubt that, if he responds to this reply, he'll change the subject yet again! As I said, it seems to be an unfortunate compulsion of Hegelian Marxists....
MS is still labouring under the illusion that my site was set up to explain Marxist economics. It wasn't. It was set up with the sole purpose of exposing the incoherence of Dialectical Marxism at every level, in the course of which I naturally have to address several side-issues; but even then, explaining Marxist economics wasn't one of them. If MS is dissatisfied with that, that is something I will just have to bear with fortitude. If he thinks I don't accept Marx's economics or can't explain it, I will have to live with that, too. I am not going to go down that rabbit hole. I have told MS this several times, so his repeated attempts to re-direct the discussion can be seen as an attempt to deflect from his own incapacity to explain the obscure jargon he feels compelled to use --, or, indeed, provide a clear account of the mysterious 'process of abstraction'. [Bold added.]
[I should have added that previous 'debates' with dialectically-distracted comrades revealed another unappealing trait: they all like to invent words to put in my mouth, and attribute to me ideas I do not hold nor which can reasonably be inferred from anything I have written on-line, or published elsewhere.]
As we will see, my predictions came true: MS again revealed he is intent on diverting attention from his predicament -- among which are (i) His incapacity to show that Marx hadn't abandoned Hegel root-and-branch by the time he came to publish the second edition of Das Kapital, (ii) His inability to explain arcane terms like "essence", "substance" or "internal contradiction", as well as (iii) His total failure to clarify the mysterious 'process of abstraction', or even show it exists -- continually re-directing attention away from these topics onto his mystical interpretation of Das Kapital, where he finds can spin a series of complex webs largely comprised of obscure terminology, which, even when he tries to 'explain' himself, he can only do so by using yet more of the same.
I also added this comment to Exchange #10:
So, what does MS have to say about the 'process of abstraction', or even in reply to my criticisms of it?
Nothing, zero, zilch, zippo, nada, rien...
He once again takes this mythical 'process' for granted. Worse still he ignores my refutation of it. Nor does he explain how he can possibly know what went on in Marx's mind -- which he will have to know, since he, too, thinks this 'process' takes place in the mind.
To his credit, MS has now made a weak attempt (I can't put it any higher than that) to respond to a vanishingly small percentage of what I had argued about this mysterious 'process'. I will deal with that in what follows.
MS begins with a passage in which he bestows on me a 'new' nick-name. Well, not so new: I've had it used against me many times (over at RevLeft, for example); but, no doubt feeling rather full of himself for his razor sharp wit, he then proceeds to pound it repeatedly into the ground as his response unfolds:
This will probably be my last response to Rosa. If she is willing to engage in a textual analysis of any of the three volumes of Capital, the three parts of Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse, or A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, then I will continue this "debate." Her pick. Short of such an engagement, I'm done wasting my time after this response. I like Rosa. But she is a crusader who has lost her way, a Revolutionary Errant, Donna Quixote, if you will. Rosa tilts at windmills of her own making. Slaying would-be dialectical materialists (something I am not) with hyperlinks, quotations, paralogisms, and the practice of bad faith forgetfulness of everything her interlocutors have said in the past. Of course, in reality, like Don, Donna Quixote's slaying of her opponents turns out to be nothing more than delusions of grandeur in her own solipsistic head. What she fails to realize is that if, and it is an incredibly big if, her arguments had purchase, she would not be a Marxist and Marxism would be foolishness of the highest order. Thankfully, her windmill turns out to be a mirror of herself. She slashes her own legs out from underneath herself without even realizing what she is doing. It took me some time to realize this about Donna Quixote. She is familiar with the history of Marxism, as a political movement. This led me to believe she was familiar with Marx's critique of political economy. But, as with so many Marxists, she has failed to do that one crucial thing: read Marx. Any literate person can quote Marx, opponents included. Understanding Marx requires constant engagement with his texts. On this site, in private email, and on other platforms Donna Quixote offers not a single insight into Marx's critique of political economy. Donna Quixote simply does not have the background knowledge of Marx's critique to argue with people who study Marx seriously, so she constantly takes the fight elsewhere. Unfortunately, this leads her to say incredible naïve things about Marx, things that are wildly confusing, especially to someone like me. I came to the table with a good faith assumption she was conversant with Marx's work. Perhaps I'm a slow learner or just too nice, but after repetitive pleas with her to engage Marx's texts and a slurry of odd comments made by her in our discussions, I realized the nature of the problem: she has no explanation of Marx: Donna Quixote tilts at windmills.
As I noted above, we see here yet another of my predictions coming true: MS once again tries to deflect from the serious difficulties he faces explaining the 'process of abstraction' (which was the original jumping off point of these Exchanges), onto a subject where he can attempt to blind me with his 'brilliant' use of empty verbiage:
If she is willing to engage in a textual analysis of any of the three volumes of Capital, the three parts of Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse, or A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, then I will continue this "debate." Her pick. Short of such an engagement, I'm done wasting my time after this response.
For the umpteenth time, I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole, and for reasons I've spelled out equally as often. MS can take his bat and ball home if he finds that unacceptable. I won't be losing any sleep.
But what about the following?
I like Rosa. But she is a crusader who has lost her way, a Revolutionary Errant, Donna Quixote, if you will. Rosa tilts at windmills of her own making. Slaying would-be dialectical materialists (something I am not) with hyperlinks, quotations, paralogisms, and the practice of bad faith forgetfulness of everything her interlocutors have said in the past.
I have already covered the above; here it is again:
Before I engage with MS once more, I need to underline how difficult it is arguing with fans-of-the-'dialectic'. Some will defend Engels's version of this 'theory'/'method', some will modify it, some will apply the 'dialectic' only to human development (but disagree with others exactly how that works out), others will apply it to both (and then disagree with still others over that too)! They all claim they are faithfully representing Marx, and what he argued in Das Kapital, even though that isn't possible. They will berate me for criticising their specific version of this 'theory'/'method' as if I were criticising Marx himself. The overwhelming majority ignore what I have argued -- and many will act surprised when I point this out to them --, even though, in general, I pass comment on the vast bulk of what they argue.
Moreover, my Essays are also read by Marxists who don't agree with MS, and who want to examine my case against all forms of 'dialectics'. So my responses aren't just written with MS in mind. As I also pointed out near the beginning of Exchange #10 (which MS would have seen had he bothered to read it before he unwisely rushed off his latest response):
In what follows, when readers encounter the abbreviation "DM" it should be understood as standing not just for Dialectical Materialism, but also the sort of 'Materialist Dialectics' one finds in 'Systematic' and 'Academic' Marxism. That abbreviation saves me having to make this point over and over again. In other words, it applies to any and all interpretations of 'dialectics' that have appeared over the last 160 years in the Dialectical Marxist tradition -- except, of course, Marx's own use of "dialectics", which, as we found in Part One, had nothing to do with Hegel's obscure and confused ramblings (upside down or 'the right way up'). In what follows I have also gone out of my way to point out that I am referring not simply to Engels's 'Laws', which supposedly apply across the entire universe, but to 'dialectics' as it applies to history, politics and 'Marxist economics'.
I soon discovered that MS was an HCD, for whom it seems the philosophical works of Engels and Lenin are largely worthless. HCDs prefer the 'sanitised' version of 'the dialectic' mentioned earlier (but which turns also out to be totally irrelevant to the class war!), so I specifically tailored my remarks to apply to the 'dialectic' as it supposedly pertains to human history and economics.
Hence, I rather think it is MS who has assumed the Don's mantle, and can now be seen tilting at a few windmills of his own imagination.
But, what examples of "bad faith forgetfulness of everything [my] interlocutors have said in the past" am I guilty of? MS failed to say, but this might actually be an example of projection on MS's part, since, as we have seen, not only is his memory as selective as it is convenient (regularly forgetting points I have made as if I hadn't made them, regularly ignoring my many requests that he explain what he means by some of the traditional metaphysical jargon he uses -- like "substance", "essence", "necessity", and "internal contradiction"). In addition, he also fails to read much that I post in reply to him -- or, he simply skim reads it -- and, as noted above (indeed, as we will see below), he repeatedly invents words to put in my mouth.
However, one thing I am guilty of is extensively quoting all those with whom I am debating, so that (i) they can't claim I have missed something, and so that (ii) I can show I am eager to reply to everything relevant they have to say. MS sometimes does likewise with about 1% of my words -- but more often than not he just ignores the other 99%, making up the rest. [Examples will be given below.]
But, what about this rather odd comment?
Of course, in reality, like Don, Donna Quixote's slaying of her opponents turns out to be nothing more than delusions of grandeur in her own solipsistic head.
Once more, MS failed to quote, cite, or reference even so much as one example where I appear to be deluded over my "slaying" of opponents. And what has "solipsism" got to do with anything? If I were indeed a solipsist, I would have no opponents, surely?
MS again:
On this site, in private email, and on other platforms Donna Quixote offers not a single insight into Marx's critique of political economy. Donna Quixote simply does not have the background knowledge of Marx's critique to argue with people who study Marx seriously, so she constantly takes the fight elsewhere. Unfortunately, this leads her to say incredible naïve things about Marx, things that are wildly confusing, especially to someone like me. I came to the table with a good faith assumption she was conversant with Marx's work. Perhaps I'm a slow learner or just too nice, but after repetitive pleas with her to engage Marx's texts and a slurry of odd comments made by her in our discussions, I realized the nature of the problem: she has no explanation of Marx: Donna Quixote tilts at windmills.
Maybe MS's memory is failing him again; it might help if I were to remind him that these Exchanges kicked off over the nature of 'abstraction', not Marx's economics. It is MS who repeatedly, almost neurotically, wants to "take the fight elsewhere".
Here are my opening remarks:
For the last few months I have been engaged in a rather abstruse debate over the viability of the process of abstraction and the nature of abstractions -- which soon moved on to the question whether Hegel was an important influence, or had any influence at all, on Marx when he published Volume One of Das Kapital -- with an excellent comrade I met on Quora (who also happens to be a fan of 'Systematic Dialectics', and, if he'll forgive me saying this, an HCD). [Bold added.]
MS might consider helping his memory out by re-reading the above a few more times, but hopefully paying attention this time. There is no mention there of Marx's economic theory, but the influence of Hegel on Marx and the nature of abstraction. MS is the one who wants to drift off topic all the time and who would prefer to ignore the following words (which come from Exchange #10, slightly edited):
In response to the following [this is me speaking -- RL]:
I am a Marxist, so I accept Marx's explanation of capitalism, providing we follow his lead and rid it of all traces of Hegel (upside down or 'the right way up'). I have pointed you toward an interpretation of Das Kapital that I accept (with suitable changes) -- i.e., John Rosenthal's The Myth of Dialectics.
MS replied:
Rosenthal doesn't offer anything close to a complete reading of Capital in his book from what I can tell. Kinda hard to base your reading on something so threadbare.
MS admits he hasn't read Rosenthal's book so I think we can take his opinion of it with a bucket of salt. Moreover, I nowhere said I "based" my "reading" on this book, just that it was one account of Das Kapital I'd accept (with suitable changes). In fact, I base my reading of Das Kapital on what Marx himself said -- which, even now, MS largely ignores. Here it is again (heavily edited) alongside my comments:
Some have pointed to Marx's own words -- where he refers to "the dialectic method" -- in order to counter the above allegations. The question is, of course: what did Marx himself --, not others -- what did Marx himself mean by that phrase?
Well, we needn't speculate. Marx very helpfully told us what he meant by it in that very same Afterword to the Second Edition. There, he quotes a reviewer in the following terms:
"After a quotation from the preface to my 'Criticism of Political Economy,' Berlin, 1859, pp. IV-VII, where I discuss the materialistic basis of my method, the writer goes on:
'The one thing which is of moment to Marx, is to find the law of the phenomena with whose investigation he is concerned; and not only is that law of moment to him, which governs these phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period. Of still greater moment to him is the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one. This law once discovered, he investigates in detail the effects in which it manifests itself in social life. Consequently, Marx only troubles himself about one thing: to show, by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determinate orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve him for fundamental starting-points. For this it is quite enough, if he proves, at the same time, both the necessity of the present order of things, and the necessity of another order into which the first must inevitably pass over; and this all the same, whether men believe or do not believe it, whether they are conscious or unconscious of it. Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history, governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence....As soon as society has outlived a given period of development, and is passing over from one given stage to another, it begins to be subject also to other laws. In a word, economic life offers us a phenomenon analogous to the history of evolution in other branches of biology. The old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry. A more thorough analysis of phenomena shows that social organisms differ among themselves as fundamentally as plants or animals. Nay, one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c. Marx, e.g., denies that the law of population is the same at all times and in all places. He asserts, on the contrary, that every stage of development has its own law of population. ... With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too. Whilst Marx sets himself the task of following and explaining from this point of view the economic system established by the sway of capital, he is only formulating, in a strictly scientific manner, the aim that every accurate investigation into economic life must have. The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one. And it is this value that, in point of fact, Marx's book has.'
"Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" [Marx (1976), pp.101-02. Bold emphases added; quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
In the above passage, not one single Hegelian concept is to be found -- no "contradictions", no change of "quantity into quality", no "negation of the negation", no "unity and identity of opposites", no "interconnected Totality", no "universal change" --, and yet Marx still calls this the "dialectic method", and says of it that it is "my method".
So, Marx's "method" has had Hegel completely excised --, except for the odd phrase or two, "here and there", with which he merely "coquetted".
In that case, and once more, Marx's "dialectic method" more closely resembles that of Aristotle, Kant and the Scottish Historical School.
Notice, too: Marx isn't here referring to a "dialectic method", nor yet merely part, or one aspect, of "the dialectic method", but "the dialectic method". Even more significant, this is the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life.
Moreover, Marx's published words carry far more weight than do his unpublished musings. So, unlike the vast majority of Marx's epigones, I begin with this passage when I want to understand Marx --, since it tells us what Marx himself, not anyone else, what Marx himself considered his "method" to be -- and I interpret everything else Marx said about 'dialectics' in that light.
Mysteriously, those who claim to be Marxists refuse to do this! In fact, they almost totally ignore both this passage and what Marx said about it. Indeed, many of them severely criticise me for paying any heed to it!
It is worth repeating the following words, in larger print this time:
This is the only summary of "the dialectic method" Marx published and endorsed in his entire life.
But clearly, and in flat contradiction to what he said earlier, Marx's own words aren't good enough for MS.
Unlike MS, I "base" my reading of Das Kapital on this.
As I have already pointed out: MS will need to find a version of the "dialectic method" -- published and endorsed by Marx himself, contemporaneous with or subsequent to the second edition of Das Kapital --, that supports his mystical interpretation of Marx's economic theory....
Oh wait! There isn't one...
And now we are faced with some rather impressive chest beating from our very own Resident Mystic:
In what follows, I respond in the opposite manner of Rosa, that is, in a rational and coherent format. Rosa likes to muddy the water as much as possible to distract people from the fact that she has literally nothing to say about Marx. Links, long quotations by others, and incredibly cumbersome quote chopping make for a dizzying maelstrom of confusion. The last technique -- arbitrarily taking single quotes as self-standing assertions -- allows her to charge "dogmatism" and "prove it," when the contested claim has already been proven elsewhere. This causes frustration in her opponents. And, voila, the Revolutionary Errant deems her opponents’ frustration proof of her own victory. Windmill defeated. [Bold added.]
In this series of Exchanges, I have only used the word "prove" twice, in this context. Here they are:
I explained why you have been dogmatic. You assert things using obscure Hegelianised jargon (which you struggle to explain, except you blame me for your failure to do so, or you 'explain' it with yet more obscure Hegelianised jargon, just as I predicted), which you neither prove exist nor even attempt to prove exist. I suspect you think that if you use complicated words I will accept that as proof, when you just assert such things. So you use phrases like "self moving substance" as if to intimidate me. You also help yourself to "contradiction" which you have yet to explain (see below). The use of obscure jargon is characteristic of dogma. It stands like a wall between a theorist and comprehension, and which serves in the place of clarity and understanding. As I pointed out to you, if you can't explain yourself without using such dogmatic, obscure jargon, not even you understand what you are saying. You're just mouthing words, a bit like a Pentecostal ecstatic, except using what look like English words....
I am also irredeemably suspicious of those who can't express their ideas without the use of Hegelian, or other jargon drawn from Traditional Thought; and if they can't explain themselves in ordinary language, I refuse to believe they understand what they themselves are banging on about. Sad to say that is also true of my reception of MS's comments. Sure, like other HCDs, MS is an expert at reeling off pages of jargon, and I am sure he thinks he understands it -- just as I thought I understood Kant when I was reproducing all those unfiltered Kantianisms --, but in so far as he can't explain himself in ordinary language (free of all that jargon), and flatly refuses even to face the serious problems which that jargon creates, I just don't believe him. Of course, he can prove me wrong by producing an explanation of, say, "contradiction" (as Hegel thought he was using that word) employing only ordinary language, free of traditional forms-of-thought. He'll be the very first person in over 200 years to do that if he succeeds. [From here. Bold added.]
In each case, MS failed to rise to my simple challenge; in that case, we are still owed an explanation of the terms/concepts mentioned above. Does MS provide a link to where he has explained them without using yet more obscure jargon to that end? No, he doesn't. When I am challenged I supply links or I re-quote myself. No wonder MS wants to deflect attention from the difficulties he has forced upon himself.
At long last, MS then offered up a defence of 'abstractionism', which, alas, turns out to be rather weak:
Rosa thinks she has soundly disproven the possibility of abstractions long ago. This causes her to work within a closed system of thought that filters any new information through her faulty understanding, thereby distorting even the simplest of explanations. Abstractions are magical, mysterious, and metaphysical impossibilities to Rosa. It does not matter what someone means by abstraction. She clearly doesn't understand what Marx means by abstraction. She just knows abstraction = bad. It's part of her crusade to attack them, for reasons I'll get to shortly. Unfortunately, her ignorance places her in a similar position to our hominid ancestors and their reactions to lightning. All the hominids knew was lightning = bad. If a regular person from the 21st century came and explained lighting to a hominid, her reaction would be similar to Rosa's reaction to abstractions, namely a simple explanation would sound like "gooblygook" [sic] and fancy "jargon." Instead of learning about lightning or abstractions, the hominid and Rosa treat their respective mysteries as, well, mysteries. If anyone tries to explain the "mysteries" to her, he or she is met with closed-minded incredulity. The unexplainable can't be explained. Anyone who tries to do so is confused, or so Rosa thinks.
First, it would have helped if MS had been clear from day one what he meant by "abstraction", but he wasn't. Now, I openly admit I am mystified by this 'process', just as I am mystified by the Christian Trinity. And my perplexity hasn't been helped by the fact that Traditional Philosophers, and now DM-fans, have yet to explain what they mean by it. I quoted dozens of theorists in Essay Three Parts One and Two, all of whom are no less vague about this mysterious 'process'. Nor has anyone in well over two thousand years even shown that this process actually exists. MS seems to think that if he simply asserts it exists then that is an end of the matter; well no more that it is the end of the matter if someone else asserts 'god' exists. MS also appears to think that if I ask difficult questions, or I expose the serious problems this theory faces it is Rosa who is in the wrong or who is being unreasonable!
Second, MS has yet to explain what Marx meant by 'abstraction', let alone what he means by it, and he also seems to think that if Marx kept using the word (without telling us in any detail what he was doing -- he, too, just took this word for granted and ignored all the problems others, and he himself, have pointed out about this 'process' -- more on this later), then that is explanation enough! Repetition isn't explanation. Neither is emphatic assertion.
Of course, MS hasn't read Essay Two, where I quote over a hundred DM-theorists (no exaggeration!), many of which are lengthy passages of text that supply their own context, and which unequivocally show that every single dialectician does indeed dogmatically impose her/his ideas on nature and society. In fact, MS not only does likewise to capitalism, he even does it to Marx himself!
But, what about this?
The last technique -- arbitrarily taking single quotes as self-standing assertions -- allows her to charge "dogmatism" and "prove it," when the contested claim has already been proven elsewhere. This causes frustration in her opponents. And, voila, the Revolutionary Errant deems her opponents’ frustration proof of her own victory. Windmill defeated.
The problem with this is that MS still hasn't demonstrated a single thing in relation to the topics under discussion -- summarised here. Once more, he takes 'abstraction' for granted.
Or this?
She just knows abstraction = bad. It's part of her crusade to attack them, for reasons I'll get to shortly. Unfortunately, her ignorance places her in a similar position to our hominid ancestors and their reactions to lightning. All the hominids knew was lightning = bad. If a regular person from the 21st century came and explained lighting to a hominid, her reaction would be similar to Rosa's reaction to abstractions, namely a simple explanation would sound like "gooblygook" [sic] and fancy [sic] "jargon." Instead of learning about lightning or abstractions, the hominid and Rosa treat their respective mysteries as, well, mysteries. If anyone tries to explain the "mysteries" to her, he or she is met with closed-minded incredulity. The unexplainable can't be explained. Anyone who tries to do so is confused, or so Rosa thinks.
Here, MS has again put words in my mouth. Where have I said, implied, hinted or even vaguely suggested that this is my opinion: "She just knows abstraction = bad."? He even equates me with some mythical "hominids" whom he supposes entertained the thought "lightning = bad", suggesting my reaction would be like their hypothetical response to someone from the 21st century who tried to explain that phenomenon to them. However, these hypothetical visitors from the present wouldn't need to demonstrate that lightning exists (it would be plain for all to see!), but MS has yet to show this mysterious 'process' actually exists! One wonders what a visitor from the 21st century would try to do in order to persuade one of these "hominids" that the process of abstraction actually exists? If that visitor were MS, he'd probably blame them for not comprehending his superior 'rationality', or accuse them of "dogmatism" and "bad faith" for not accepting him as their Great Teacher. The dialecticians' burden?
Be this as it may, we can once again see this as MS's way of deflecting attention from the fact that he can't explain what he means by the Hegelian terms he has imposed on Marx -- without using yet more esoteric jargon to that end.
As my Essays reveal, I don't begin with an irrational rejection of abstractionism, I actually start with a detailed analysis of its history, beginning in Ancient Greece, where ruling-class theorists originally invented this mythical 'process' -- and they did so for class conscious reasons, which I also expose. I then show in extensive detail how the background theory to abstractionism undermines the unity of the proposition (which MS completely ignores). This is then followed by a summary of anti-abstractionist thought (which MS also blithely ignores) in Essay Three Part Two -- and this includes Marx's own attack on this mysterious 'process' -- to which I then add my own objections. This material stretches across 250,000 words, the equivalent of a 500 page book! But MS's response to all that is to wave it to one side with a dismissive "She just knows abstraction = bad." [Bold added.] That alone should tell us that just like other defenders of Hegelian Mysticism he approached this discussion disingenuously. That in turn helps explain why he keeps trying to change the subject and why he ignores much that I have actually argued, preferring to put words in my mouth.
If anyone tries to explain the "mysteries" to her, he or she is met with closed-minded incredulity. The unexplainable can't be explained. Anyone who tries to do so is confused, or so Rosa thinks.
MS might have had a point had he actually tried to explain this 'process', but he simply assumes it exists or that it is somehow self-explanatory. Readers should check back: I have repeatedly asked for an explanation, but up to now none has been forthcoming. MS just meets each request with a dialectical sulk, which means that MS is no heroic figure from the 21st century keen to enlighten 'backward' and 'partially evolved' Rosa with the good news about 'abstraction'. In fact, he is more like the stage magicians mentioned earlier, keen to distract attention from the fact that he hasn't a clue how to explain this 'mysterious process' or show it exists.
Of course, this means 'abstraction' is as big a mystery to him as it is to me.
As I noted in Essay Three Part One:
To be sure, just like Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy, the Traditional Tale about 'abstraction' is deeply engrained in our (intellectual) culture -- you will even find psychologists who assure us that we can all construct or apprehend "abstractions" in the intimate confines of our skulls, even if they go rather quiet (or indulge in no little hand waving) when asked to fill in the details -- to such an extent that experience has taught me to avoid questioning this mythical 'process' in polite company or risk being treated like someone who has just confessed to murder.
That comment is especially true of debates with Marxist dialecticians, zealous defenders of Traditional Jargon and the ruling-class thought-forms that gave them life. [This is just the latest example of such 'radical' conservatism.]
[I will now be able to add a link to these Exchanges next to the above "latest example". Indeed, I have just done so.]
The next section of MS's 'reply' perhaps exposes his disingenuousness in all its glory:
This is how Rosa reasons. Someone says they combined numbers in their head through the mental process of "addition." Rosa says "where did mysterious mental process take place?" The person says, "uhh, in my head." Rosa says "impossible!" "Show me where in your head?" The person, say "do what?" Rosa says, "metaphysical imposter!" The person says, "here, I’ll just right [sic] it down on paper." So the person writes down "2 + 2 = 4." Rosa says, "STOP!" "We can’t talk about that because it is proof." Rosa continues, "now, explain to me this mental process of so- called addition?" The person tells Rosa to go f*ck herself. Rosa claims victory.
MS will search long and hard and to no avail through anything I have said on this page, in any of my Essays, or anywhere else on-line where I have argued in the above manner, or even so much as hinted that that is how I would so argue. That is, of course, why MS failed to quote me to that effect.
First: I have devoted several hundred thousand words in Essay Thirteen Part Three to an extensive criticism of the Platonic-Christian-Cartesian theory of 'the mind' (which I have called the "Cartesian Paradigm" -- CP), arguing at length that the supposition that we do any thinking in our heads is hoplessly confused. I nowhere assert this theory is false or exclaim "Impossible!", since that would be to hint at a theory of my own. Much of the point of my Essays is to show that all such philosophical theories are incoherent non-sense (to be distinguished from "nonsense" -- my use of "non-sense" is explained here), so I nowhere accept, advance or advocate a single philosophical theory of my own (or any at all!). I have no philosophical theories of my own, nor do I want one, and for the above reasons.
I don't just assert that the CP is hopelessly confused, I reference philosophers (including Wittgenstein) who also argue in detail this way -- as well as neuroscientists who agree with this assessment. Again, I have also added my own arguments in support. Here is just one such, where I first of all assume that it makes some sort of sense to suppose we do use our brains to think. Based on that assumption, I argue that not only don't we, we can't use our brains to think. So, on that assumption, the supposition that we use our brains to think -- and hence that thinking takes place in the head -- is then reduced to absurdity. From that it is concluded that the supposition itself is radically confused.
This comes from Essay Thirteen Part Three, Note 52a:
For the purposes of argument, let us assume we use our brains to think.
Well, we certainly use books, pens, paper, computers -- even our hands and feet (and much else besides) -- to do whatever we choose to do with them, but without a brain we couldn't use or do anything at all. I presume we are all agreed on that.
However, if we did use our brains, and we agree we need a brain to use anything, then that must mean we would have to use our brains in order to use our brains! But, in that case, we would now have an infinite regress, since we would have to use our brains in order to use our brains, in order to use our brains, in order to...
Hence, it makes no sense to suppose we use our brains to do anything.
[That shouldn't be taken to mean that the brain is a redundant organ! After all, I have just asserted that without a brain we wouldn't be able to do anything at all.]
Admittedly, that conclusion isn't just controversial, it seems both counter-intuitive and un-scientific. In which case, it might be worth going over the above argument again more slowly, and perhaps in more detail, to see if a mistake has been made somewhere.
We may perhaps begin with this uncontroversial assumption:
P1: Having a brain is a necessary condition for being able to do anything at all.
From which we may perhaps argue as follows:
P2: If P1 were the case, we would need another brain to use our brains.
P3: But, we don't have a spare brain, we have only one brain each.
P4: Therefore, we don't use our brains.
P5: If we don't use our brains, we certainly don't use them to think.
Of course, that doesn't imply thinking doesn't take place in the brain, only that if it does take place there, we wouldn't be in control of our thinking, since we don't use our brains.
It might be thought possible to argue in response that we think with our brains, but it is unclear what that means. If it means that having a brain is a necessary condition for us to be able to do anything at all (i.e., P1), then, once again, that is uncontroversial. On the other hand, if it means we use our brains to think (which is its most natural interpretation), then no sense can be made of it.
Furthermore, any suggestion to the contrary (i.e., that we do in fact use our brains to think) clearly implies a modified form of Cartesianism -- since it suggests there is 'something' over-and-above the brain -- as, for instance, in "I use my brain to think" (but, to what does this "I" refer -- a brainless 'self'?) -- that uses the brain to think. But, what can that 'something' be other than the 'soul', or a disembodied/non-material 'mind'? Either that, or it implies that each of us has an homunculus (a little man) in our heads that uses our brains (or even 'his' own brain) to do the thinking for us. [Rather like the set-up suggested in the recent Disney film, Inside Out.] But does this 'little man in the head' also have a brain? If so, the same problems apply to 'him' that we met earlier. If not, if 'he' has no brain, and having a brain is a necessary condition for anyone to be able to do anything at all (i.e., P1), then this 'little man' wouldn't be able to do anything, let alone 'think for us' or enable us to think.
Some might argue that the "I" here obviously refers to the individual concerned. However, there are good reasons to think otherwise (on that, see Anscombe (1975), and Hacker (1993a), pp.207-28); but, even if "I" were a referring expression that designated the individual concerned, its use here would still suggest that there was something identifiable and 'internal' to each individual that was separate from the brain (another brain?), which used the brain to do the thinking. But, as pointed out above, if having a brain is a necessary condition for being able to do anything at all (P1), then this "I" would also need a brain to use its brain, and so on...
It could be objected that the brain uses itself, or even that a part of the brain -- a module, perhaps -- uses other parts to do the thinking. However, if having a brain is a necessary condition for being able to do anything at all (P1), and the brain used itself to think, then the brain would need a second brain in order to do so, or even cause a given module to think. Down that route I fear lies yet another infinite regress -- as in: the brain needs a brain, which needs a brain, which needs a brain, which needs..., to think.
Perhaps this is again a little too fast. So, let us suppose that a part of the brain uses another part to think. These parts could be entirely separate, partially interlinked, or even completely interconnected.
Let us call the part of the brain that does this, "B(1)", and the part that does the thinking as a result -- or which is controlled by B(1) -- "B(2)". In that case, B(1) does no thinking itself, B(2) does it all under the control of B(1). But, if that were so, we wouldn't need a brain to do, or to use, anything, as we supposed earlier (P1), we would just need a part of the brain to do it. In that case, in order to do anything we would only need a B(1). But, that just replaces "brain" with "B(1)" in P1-P5, yielding P6-P10:
P6: Having a working B(1) is a necessary condition for being able to do anything at all.
P7: Hence, if we used B(1), we would need another B(1) in order to do so.
P8: We have only one B(1) each.
P9: Therefore, we don't use B(1).
P10: If we don't use B(1), we certainly don't use it to make B(2) think.
It could be objected that the above is prejudicial; while we might need B(1) to make or enable other parts to think, it doesn't follow that we need it in order to do everything, or even anything. Different modules take on different tasks. We might even argue that thinking is a capacity, state or activity that is distributed across an entire brain.
So, let us suppose that module M(1) does task T(1), module M(2) does task T(2), module M(3) does task T(3),..., and module M(n) does task T(n) -- the use of one or more of which enables us to think. [We could even suppose that these tasks overlap or interlink in some way.] On this account, one or more of these modules would be identical with B(1), from earlier. But, that just replaces "B(1)", or even "brain", with one or more of the following:
(i) M(1), M(2), M(3),..., M(n),
(ii) A conjunction, or a disjunction (a union or an intersection, to use the jargon), of the elements M(1), M(2), M(3),..., M(n), or,
(iii) A sub-set of those elements.
Suppose (i) were the case. If so, call the set comprising M(1), M(2), M(3),..., M(n), "M".
Alternatively, suppose (ii) were the case. If so, call this set "M(C v D)" [where "C" stands for "conjunction of these elements", "D" for "disjunction of these elements" and "v" for "or"].
Finally, if (iii) were the case, call this option, "M(S)". [Where "S" stands for "sub-set of these elements".]
Clearly, one of these must be the right choice. That is, either M, M(C v D), or M(S) must be the correct option. Call that disjunction itself "M(Ω)".
So, M(Ω) is a disjunction of elements of the set: {M, M(C v D), M(S)} -- i.e., M(Ω) comprises these sub-sets: M, M(C v D), M(S).
In that case, we can replace the word "brain" in P1, or "B(1)" in P6, with "M(Ω)", as follows:
P11: Having a working M(Ω) is a necessary condition for being able to do anything at all. [That must be so since M(Ω) is in effect every module comprising the brain.]
P12: Hence, if we used M(Ω), we would need another M(Ω) in order to do so.
P13: We have only one M(Ω) each.
P14: Therefore, we don't use M(Ω).
P15: If we don't use M(Ω), we certainly don't use it to think.
[The same result emerges if we take each element of M(Ω) severally or collectively, but that task has been left to the reader (but not her brain) to complete.]
If we now argue that we don't use M(Ω), or any element comprising it, to control anything, then it must be autonomous of our will. In that case, the result is conceded: we don't use our brains, after all. That disposes of the response that thinking is a capacity, state or activity that is distributed across an entire brain we met earlier. If thinking is distributed in this way across an entire brain, but isn't controlled by anything, then thinking must be independent of the will. In that eventuality, it isn't easy to see how it could be attributed to the individual concerned, how any thought would be that person's thought.
The problem is that if that were so, something else must control what we do or what we think (since we plainly don't act or think randomly). What that 'something else' might be is now entirely mysterious, but it looks suspiciously like an autonomous Cartesian 'soul', or a 'non-physical mind', once more.
It could be objected that the argument presented above itself leads to a modified form of Cartesianism, for if we don't use our brains, or we don't use M(Ω) (or any element of it), then it/they must indeed be independent of our brains, and hence must be controlled by something immaterial.
But that isn't so. Cartesianism implies there is something over and above the brain that controls the brain. Full-blooded Cartesianism posits an immaterial soul that does this, and which thinks independently of the brain. Modified Cartesianism hives this off to the entire brain, or to some module or modules of the brain, which does this. That form of Cartesianism still locates thought in our heads. The argument presented above (i.e., P1-P15) shows that no sense can be made of this modified version. The implication of this is that if we want to continue arguing that thought takes place in our heads, then that would automatically commit us to Full-blooded Cartesianism.
By way of stark contrast, the approach adopted at this site and in this Essay rejects this metaphysical use of words in its entirety, and redirects our attention toward how we actually use language to speak about our psychological make-up and our cognitive states and abilities (which doesn't even remotely suggest we think with our brains or even that we do this 'in the head'). I have referenced dozens of books and articles (written from a Wittgensteinian perspective) that argue in support of this approach -- here and here, for example.
This means that the approach adopted at this site is neither committed to the doctrine that thought takes place 'in our heads', nor to its opposite, its rejection, just that no sense can be made of either option. The same applies to the claim that the brain acts independently of our will, or is even controlled by our will, and that includes the idea that thought is either controlled by the will or is independent of the will. Every single one of these options is rejected, and for the same reason. P1-P15-type reductios can be used to show that no sense can be made of each of these metaphysical (or 'scientific') alternatives. Again, that is left to the reader to complete for herself. [Or she can check out the literature mentioned in the previous paragraph.]
Now, we might be tempted to replace the above modules with a computer programme of some description -- or something analogous to one --, claiming perhaps that we use some sort of 'software' to do all our thinking, or, indeed, to do anything at all. In that case, just replace "M(Ω)" above with "software of some sort". Nothing changes; no sense can be made of the idea that we use our brains, part of our brains, or even 'software', to do anything.
It could be countered that computers actually use software to do various tasks. If so, why can't we use something analogous to software to do whatever we do, just like computers? However, as the above shows, whatever it is that computers actually do, we can make no sense of the supposition that we do likewise. Of course, computers don't actually use anything, they just operate in the way they were intended by their designers and programmers. In which case, a human being is necessary for computers to do anything, and if that is so, we are back where we were a dozen or so paragraphs back.
Someone might wonder what would happen to the above considerations if one day computers became autonomous, or even self-aware, and then maybe they were capable of designing and building other computers of the same sort. In that case, no human being would be required for these computers to do anything. But this is just science fiction, and when we descend into that realm of fantasy, where we have no rules to guide us, no rules to determine what we can legitimately assume and what we may not, then we can surely assume anything we like. Hence, if someone were allowed to assume computers might become autonomous or even self-aware, what is to stop someone else from assuming that an 'evil genius' (analogous to the 'evil demon' Descartes introduced into his argument to test the veracity of his own thoughts) has installed a (hidden) programme (or 'back door') in such computers to mimic autonomy and self-awareness, when the computer concerned isn't itself autonomous or self-aware, after all. And in response to every attempt to circumvent this counter response, we then assume this 'evil genius' is even more cunning than we thought and has designed a programme to circumvent each such attempt. And if we try to argue that computer experts would find any such hidden programmes/'back doors' in the code, that would concede the point since that 'evil genius' will have succeeded in mimicking human autonomy, self-awareness and thought.
If we now try to argue that other computers might still become autonomous and self-aware where it could be shown by computer experts that no secret programmes/'back doors' had been installed to mimic autonomy. But, what is to stop someone then arguing that those who have checked to see if there are no secret programmes (etc.) are all mistaken, or that they have all been bribed, drugged or hypnotised to find no such secret programmes/'back doors'. Or, indeed, that these programmers are themselves androids programmed by this 'evil genius' to come to that conclusion. It is no good objecting that that scenario is implausible in the extreme, since it is no less implausible to suggest that computers might become self-aware. If one such implausibility is permitted it is difficult to see how the number of allowable implausibilities may be restricted to just one. Indeed, in science fiction we are supposed to suspend our usual notions of plausibility.
The bottom line here is that when we introduce science fiction into philosophy, all bets are off.
Of course, there are colloquialisms -- such as "Use your brain!" -- that seem to suggest otherwise, that we do use our brains, but we should no more want to take that colloquialism literally than we would want to take "I have half a mind to enter politics" literally, either.
However, let us suppose some way can be found to circumvent or neutralise the above conclusions; even then our difficulties would only just be beginning. In that eventuality it would be worth asking: if we do indeed use our brains, or we run software that enables us to think "in our heads", or which in the end does all our calculations/thinking for us, how do we know that any of our thoughts and calculations are valid/correct? How might we check what our brains supposedly conclude, how might we validate the results of this 'internal processor'? If we can't check these results, except we use our brains, or this 'software', to check itself -- which would be like someone checking their own height by placing their palm on the top of their head -- how do we know that anything our brains produce is correct, even about itself and what it supposedly does or doesn't do?
Again, it could be pointed out that we must be able to arrive at correct conclusions, at the truth, some or most of the time otherwise our species wouldn't have survived. But, if all we have available to us is the output of this 'internal processor', how do we know that anything is the case? How do we know that we have even evolved? That we even have brains? That we are human beings? That anything else exists? No good appealing to 'evidence', since all such 'evidence' is processed by this 'Internal Big Brother' [IBB], which has yet to be shown to be trustworthy.
It doesn't take much thought to see that we are now facing exactly the same sort of problems that haunted Descartes (indeed, this is just a variation of the science fiction option we met earlier). He 'extricated' himself from this bottomless pit of scepticism (concluding that he had neutralised the 'evil demon' he imagined might be screwing with his thoughts) by appealing to a beneficent 'God' -- whom he imagined wouldn't allow him to be so deceived -- to validate his conclusions. Must we do likewise?
But, even that would be to no avail. The question would now be: who guarantees 'God's' thoughts?
[This is just a theological version of: "Who guarantees the results generated by our very own IBB?"]
Of course, Descartes's 'solution' was no solution, since everything we think we know about 'God' has been fed to us by our very own IBB, which has yet to be shown to be reliable. So, theological fiction turns out to be no more help than science fiction was earlier.
That is why it was asserted in Essay Three Part Four (not yet published) that Traditional and Modern 'Theories of Mind' all collapse into some form of Solipsism.
[On whether we think with our brains, see Geach (1969b). See also Note 2. Added on Edit: Details of the references I have cited can be found in the Bibliography to Essay Thirteen Part Three. However, no one should conclude from the above that I am a sceptic or that I accept the sceptical conclusions I have reached. They are only being aired in order to underline the very real sceptical implications of the theory that we 'think with our brains' -- or, indeed, that 'thinking takes place in our heads' -- i.e., the sceptical implications of Cartesianism and neo-Cartesianism. I have said much more about this in Essay Thirteen Parts One and Three, and, as noted, I will say even more in Essay Three Part Four.]
Of course, MS is perfectly at liberty to reject the above (not that he needs my permission or acquiescence), but to claim I just respond to those who have accepted the CP (the modified version or some other) with the sort of comments he has attributed to me is the very epitome of 'bad faith'.
Here are those comments again. Readers are invited to compare them with my actual arguments (presented in Essay Thirteen Part Three, or even the 0.5% of them reproduced above):
This is how Rosa reasons. Someone says they combined numbers in their head through the mental process of "addition." Rosa says "where did mysterious mental process take place?" The person says, "uhh, in my head." Rosa says "impossible!" "Show me where in your head?" The person, say "do what?" Rosa says, "metaphysical imposter!" The person says, "here, I’ll just right [sic] it down on paper." So the person writes down "2 + 2 = 4." Rosa says, "STOP!" "We can’t talk about that because it is proof." Rosa continues, "now, explain to me this mental process of so- called addition?" The person tells Rosa to go f*ck herself. Rosa claims victory.
[In Essay Thirteen Part Three I also respond to clichéd arguments that brain scans, etc., show that we actually 'think in our heads', using, among other things, counter-arguments presented by neuroscientists themselves, which undermine that very idea.]
But, what about the point MS makes about mental arithmetic? I have in fact already covered this 'objection' in Essay Three Part Two. I won't repeat all that material here, it would just make this response as long as the marathon Exchange #10; I will simply summarise part of that argument.
First, let us concede for the sake of argument that mental arithmetic is, after all, done 'in the head' (and we ignore or reject all the arguments I have presented against that very idea in Essay Thirteen Part Three); even then, MS's analogy would face serious problems of its own.
The first of these is that the meaning of the symbols we use and the legitimacy of the operations we employ while doing mental arithmetic were all established long before any of us tried to do any calculations 'in our heads'. We have to be taught arithmetic before we can do mental arithmetic. That isn't so with 'abstraction'. The meaning of the terms handled 'in the mind/head' during the 'process of abstraction' are established by that process itself, so we have no idea beforehand what these terms mean -- again, unlike mental arithmetic. Furthermore, we have no idea, either, what 'operations' (if any!) are being used by each abstractor (they refuse to tell us!), nor have we any clue if they are legitimate 'operations', whether they yield the 'right results', or even if there are any 'right' results for them to reach -- again, unlike mental arithmetic. None of us was taught how to abstract before we supposedly tried to do some 'abstracting in our heads'. The significance of that observation will emerge presently.
In relation to the above, here is just part of what I added to Essay Three Part Two:
I [posted the following over at] the Soviet Empire Forum a few years back (modified and edited):
The meaning of the abstract nouns and/or adjectives obtained via the 'process of abstraction' is established by the results of that process.
"The notion of a universal and with it the celebrated problem of universals was invented by Plato.... The distinction of particulars and universals is complemented in many doctrines since Plato with the distinction and division of labour between the senses and the reason or intellect, or understanding. According to these doctrines, what is given to the bodily senses is merely particular, and the understanding or reason alone apprehends, or constructs or derives, the universal. Many philosophers take the problem of universals to be that of the meaning of general terms without realising that what makes the meaning of general terms a problem is the very concept of a universal." [Cowley (1991), p.85. Spelling modified to agree with UK English.]
So, for example, the word "cat" no longer relates to cats in the real world but to an 'abstract particular', 'cat', that emerges as a result of this 'process'. Sure, it is supposed to 'reflect' cats in reality, but whether or not it does that, the abstraction at the end gives the meaning of the word "cat"; the fury animal on the mat does not. We can see that from the fact that if and when that cat dies, the meaning of "cat" does not die with it.
The same is the case with "population" and "value".
What Dialectical Marxists mean by, say, "value" is given by the process of
abstraction applied to the ordinary noun "value", so that the 'dialectical
meaning of the processed noun, "value", is no longer the same as the meaning of
its ordinary, typological twin. The 'dialectical' word, "value", now applies to
the abstraction, 'value'. How this then reflects what supposedly occurs or
exists in the economy is to be determined by the new meaning it has just
acquired. "Value" now becomes the Proper Name of 'value', naming this
abstract particular.
An abstract
particular is like a genuine particular (such as the chair you are now sat
in (if you are), the screen you are looking at -- or even,
you),
to which we can, if we so choose, give names, or pick out by the use of a
singular term (such as the definite description, "The screen you are now looking at"), except 'abstract
particulars' don't exist in the world around us. They are, however, still to be
designated by the use of Proper Names or other singular terms (such as "The Form of the
Good", "Cathood", "The Population", or "Value").
In Plato's theory these abstract particulars turned out to be the 'Forms'. In Aristotle's they were the
'Universals';
in other philosophers' theories they were variously 'Concepts', 'Categories', or 'Ideas'
supposedly named by abstract general nouns or adjectives (or
nominalised verbs
-- to be explained presently). This helped encourage the parallel idea that all
words are names --
they name the ideas/concepts/categories we have in our heads, all of which we
comprehend [perhaps more fully] at the end of the supposed 'process of abstraction'.
This means that this process was a spin off of the idea that we are only able to
understand [anything using] language if all our words
name
something. Given
this
theory, Proper Names/Proper Nouns (like "Plato", "Socrates", "George W Bush")
were easy to grasp; they named the individual idea we supposedly have of the
person or object involved, or, indeed, they named those individuals/objects
themselves. But general words didn't seem to name anything
tangible. What does "cat" name? Or "value"? "Cat" can't name all the cats we
have met, since that would mean one person's idea of a cat would be
different from another's, and the word would change its meaning as we met new
cats. Hence, philosophers invented the 'process of abstraction' so they could
explain what all of us name when we talk about cats -- i.e., what the
general noun "cat" names, which is then transformed into the Universal 'Cat', Cathood,
or the
Essence of Cat.
So, "Cat" became the Proper Name of Cathood, or its 'essence'. The same is the
case with "commodity", "population" and "value" in Marx's later work,
since their meaning can't be ascertained by actually
pointing to
anything in society, either. They supposedly depict something at work 'below the
surface of appearances', but have to be 'processed' first, by each lone
abstractor. This means that the 'real' meaning of all our general nouns must be
ascertained, or rather they must be
fixed,
by a similar 'process of abstraction'.
We were supposed to be able to discover the 'real meaning' of such abstractions by one
or other of the
following two avenues, depending on whether the theorist concerned was an
Empiricist or a Rationalist.
For the Empiricist, we attain the general idea of 'cat' by a process of subtraction
(something we do 'in our heads') until we obtain the general idea of a cat,
something all cats supposedly share -- this is Locke's theory, for example. The
'process of abstraction' yields
the 'real'
or
perhaps
the 'nominal' essence of the item concerned. [The real essence is what is
supposed to exist in the outside world independently of us -- what
philosophers these days might call a de
re essence.
The nominal essence is just a name we supposedly give things, which might or
might not reflect anything in reality -- what philosophers these days would call
a de
dicto essence.]
For the Rationalist, however, we arrive at our knowledge of these 'forms' or 'concepts' by the
'light of reason' (in effect, we think 'god's' thoughts after 'him'), or,
according to Plato, we recall the
Forms we met in our earlier existence in Heaven, which we then forget about as a
result of the shock of birth. For the German Idealists, we apply these general
terms to objects we meet in experience, by a 'law of cognition', as Lenin might
have put it. Marx described this process as follows:
If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy -- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -- 'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'. [Marx and Engels, The Holy Family.]
All very mysterious.
[By the way, to nominalise a verb is to turn it into a noun. For example, in
place of "Socrates runs" we obtain "Socrates is a runner" -- so, plainly,
"Socrates" names Socrates, or our idea of him, and "runner" (now a noun) names
the general category or class, 'runner', or our idea of it, to which he supposedly belongs;
'runner' is now an
abstract particular, and the abstract noun "runner" becomes the Proper Name of
this 'abstract particular', the class of runners. In addition, according to the
Identity Theory of Predication that Hegel borrowed from Medieval
Theologians, the verb "is"
'names' 'the identity
relation' (or just 'Identity') that we are now supposed to imagine exists
between our idea of Socrates and our idea of the class or category of runners,
in which we include him.
So, the sentence "Socrates runs" has become a list of nouns "Socrates"
"identity" "runner" (via "Socrates is a runner"). The significance of that
observation will soon emerge,
too.]
The
original generality expressed by terms like "cat" or "value" has now been lost since a
class is a particular.
[Added
on edit:
This topic was covered in detail in
Part One;
the argument has been summarised
here.]
For both wings of Traditional Philosophy, howsoever
we arrive at these abstract terms,
the result gave us the meaning of the words we use to describe objects and
processes -- either in
our head, in the world, in the economy, in Platonic Heaven, or wherever. So, this also
became a theory
of meaning.
[Ian Hacking's book, Why
Does Language Matter To Philosophy?
-- Hacking (1975) -- describes this tradition in relatively few pages, and with
admirable clarity.]
As Bertell Ollman points out, the problem with this is that the 'process of
abstraction' (howsoever
it is conceived) means we all construct a private
language.
We all end up meaning something
different
from everyone else by the words we have just processed, making communication impossible. [This is one reason why
Wittgenstein criticised the idea of a private language, as well as the
doctrine that all
words are names, in the Philosophical
Investigations
(Wittgenstein (2009).]
What, then, is distinctive about Marx's abstractions? To begin with, it should be clear that Marx's abstractions do not and cannot diverge completely from the abstractions of other thinkers both then and now. There has to be a lot of overlap. Otherwise, he would have constructed what philosophers call a 'private language,' and any communication between him and the rest of us would be impossible. How close Marx came to fall into this abyss and what can be done to repair some of the damage already done are questions I hope to deal with in a later work....
[This comes from Ollman's The
Dance of the Dialectic,
quoted earlier.
Added on Edit:
Seventeen years later we are still waiting for Ollman's solution to this
problem, a conundrum that has stumped everyone else who has adopted this approach to
knowledge and meaning.]
What Marx and Engels did was reverse this: If language is primarily a means of
communication, not representation (as tradition would have it -- i.e., the old
theory held that these 'abstractions' were represented in our heads and
supposedly reflected something,
somewhere), then we must begin with
the fact that we use language to communicate, and our theory of language and
meaning will
have to adapt to that fact. Anything else would undermine the social nature of
language and human intercommunication.
Wittgenstein picked this idea up in
his conversations with the Marxist economist, Piero Sraffa (Gramsci's
friend), and it completely revolutionised his approach to language. He then adopted what he
called an 'anthropological' view of discourse.
According to
this view, we are all socialised by our carers, siblings, peers, and teachers
to use language in the same way. We don't decide for ourselves what our words
mean (by a 'process of abstraction', or in any other way). That was the old idea --
you can see why this approach appealed to
bourgeois
individualist philosophers (like Locke, Berkeley and Hume). It still does,
and it remains the leading
view of language, which helps explain the dominating influence of cognitive psychology on the theory of mind
and language these days (even Chomsky has fallen for it with his
Cartesian
approach to language and mind). It is still the "ruling
idea" in the field. Wittgenstein
and Marx's approach is almost totally disdained -- and, alas, totally ignored by
those who claim to be Marxists!
So, given this new, Marx/Wittgenstein approach, we
are all taught what our words mean,
we don't teach ourselves 'in our heads' or anywhere else, for that matter. Hence, this approach begins
with the social
and works from there, not the other way round. At a stroke, this re-orientation eliminates all
the classic problems associated with abstractionism and representationalism....
However, the
old approach
to language and meaning undermines discourse completely, as Professor Lowe
explains:
"What is the problem of
predication? In a nutshell, it is this. Consider any simple
subject-predicate sentence, such as..., 'Theaetetus sits'. How are we to
understand the different roles of the subject and the predicate in this
sentence, 'Theaetetus' and 'sits' respectively? The role of 'Theaetetus' seems
straightforward enough: it serves to name, and thereby to refer to or stand for,
a certain particular human being. But what about 'sits'? Many philosophers have
been tempted to say that this also refers to or stands for something, namely, a
property or universal that Theaetetus possesses or exemplifies: the property of
sitting. This is said to be a universal, rather than a particular, because it
can be possessed by many different individuals.
"But now we have a problem, for this view of the matter seems to turn the
sentence 'Theaetetus sits' into a mere list of (two) names, each naming
something different, one a particular and one a universal: 'Theaetetus, sits.'
But a list of names is not a sentence because it is not the sort of thing that
can be said to be true or false, in the way that 'Theaetetus sits' clearly can.
The temptation now is to say that reference to something else must be involved
in addition to Theaetetus and the property of sitting, namely, the relation of
possessing that Theaetetus has to that property. But it should be evident that
this way of proceeding will simply generate the same problem, for now we have
just turned the original sentence into a list of three names, 'Theaetetus,
possessing, sits.'
"Indeed, we are now setting out on a vicious infinite regress, which is commonly
known as 'Bradley's regress', in recognition of its modern discoverer, the
British idealist philosopher
F. H.
Bradley. Bradley used the regress to argue in favour of absolute
idealism...." [Lowe (2006).]
Lowe, E. (2006), 'Take A Seat, Then Consider This Simple
Sentence', Times
Higher Education Supplement,
07/04/06....
So, the traditional theory reduces all words to nouns, and hence all such sentences to lists
of nouns, and lists say nothing. [Again, I have explained in detail how that
works in Essay Three
Part One.]
Now, the core of my criticism of this ancient theory of abstraction is not so
much that we would or wouldn't know what our words mean...it is that it
would make it impossible for anyone to say anything at all if it were true! All
our sentences would fall apart as mere lists.
None of this happens if we take
Marx's advice:
We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life. [The German Ideology, bold added.]
Note that Marx specifically connects the traditional theory with
the
philosophically individualised
lives of the theorists who invented it (i.e., petty-bourgeois early modern
philosophers, Hobbes to Hegel),
and he also links this approach to abstraction and the distortion of language.
This germ of an idea was taken up by Wittgenstein and was used by him to
revolutionise philosophy, so that, if he were correct, his method would bring to
an end 2500 years of empty speculation. It also meant that the old 'ruling
ideas' (abstractionism and representationalism, etc.) can gain no grip and
should be rejected by Marxists.
My work is (partly) aimed at bringing
this revolution back into Marxism
itself.
[Links added.]
In which case, an appeal to mental arithmetic is of no use at all in trying to make sense of the 'process of abstraction'. When we engage in mental arithmetic we employ words and symbols that already have publicly accepted meanings (and, as we have seen, meanings that can't themselves have been obtained by abstraction), as well as mathematical operations we have been taught how to use. So, these operations had been validated before they are used in mental arithmetic. The 'process of abstraction' gives a new meaning to the terms that emerge at the end (but in effect it empties them of meaning since they are now all "distorted" words, according to Marx), and, as we have also seen, there is no way that a given abstractor can know that the supposed meanings they have given to the terms they have abstracted are the same as, or are different from, anyone else's, or even the same as those they 'abstracted' the day before. Finally, the 'process of abstraction' itself hadn't been validated before it was used, since, beyond a few vagaries, no one knows what this 'process' actually involves.
MS continues:
Abstracting is no more or less "privately in our heads" than adding or subtracting or reading or thinking about anything as individual subjects. Why does Rosa make it into some metaphysical solipsistic impossibility? I literally have no clue after pouring over her site for hours. Actually, I think I might know why or I'm forced to infer why. Abstractions are her lightning. Instead of treating them like any other form of thinking, Rosa "metaphysicalizes" abstractions into something radically different than any other commonplace way of thinking. Then she projects her own "metaphysicalist" interpretation onto anyone who says they are abstracting. By definition, now, whoever claims they are abstracting, for example, the use-value characteristic of commodity away in order to examine the commodity in its economic form as an exchange-value, is claiming to do what is impossible. This is precisely the abstraction Marx makes at the beginning of Capital. And, in the current context, this is precisely what Marx means by abstraction: one-sidedly focusing on a particular aspect of an object that does not actually exist in the one-sided manner in which it is being investigated.
MS asserts that abstraction isn't a privatised process we do in our heads, no more than mental arithmetic or thinking are, and yet he has already admitted that this is indeed what abstraction is:
Let me clarify a few points about the nature of abstractions. For Marx, the term delineates a mental process undertaken by thinking subjects. He did not feel the need justify this procedure epistemologically or metaphysically by offering a theory of truth. Marx thought thoughts happened in that thinking box between the ears called "the mind."
In his own words:
"[T]he method of arising form the abstract to the concrete is the only way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind." (Grundrisse, pg. 101)
Tying this claim to failed philosophical attempts to justify "the mind" and, thereby, turning this into an epistemological, metaphysical, or linguistic debate over the nature of a "thinking box" called "the mind" is a cheap philosophical trick. Marx is not some grad school student defending a theory of truth. He is giving a critique of political economy. Thus, he simple takes it for granted that mental functions occur in our heads, instead of in our stomachs or hearts, and gets on with the business of critiquing. I sleep well at night with the same commonplace understanding of thoughts occurring "in the mind," even if I know (as Marx knew) that such a "place" cannot be given a proper philosophical defense. Thought reproduces the concrete "in the brain" expresses the same thing as thought reproduces the concrete "in the mind." [Bold in the original.]
And from Appendix E:
Abstract labour is not labour in general or "the expenditure of labour-power in general." There is no such thing or process that actually exists in the material world called labour in general. We have the cognitive ability to form a concept of labour in general by selecting out similarities between different labour processes that occur in different times and places. And, then, we can analyze the concept in our minds. [Quoted from here. Bold added.]
If this is done 'in the mind', it is a private process, and we can know nothing of it for reasons already set out above, and again below (but in much more detail in Essays Three Part One and Thirteen Part Three).
It could be objected that what MS had to say isn't misguided, as the above insinuates, since those doing the abstracting can tell their audience what they had done 'in their heads', using a public language. So, it is no more 'private' than mental arithmetic is.
However, mental arithmetic is private (has anyone ever succeeded in accessing the mental arithmetic carried out in someone else's head?), but we already know what the number terms used mean, and we also know all there is to know about the operations employed (and they have been independently validated, in the open, not 'in the head'), so when people tell us about what they have done 'in their heads', they are able to turn a private process into public knowledge. The media they use (i.e., the language and the mathematical terms employed) are constant throughout and were publicly accessible before they were used. That isn't the case with 'the process of abstraction'; every step, and the meaning of terms supposedly 'processed', remain mysterious before and after -- MS still refuses to tell us what he or Marx did 'in their heads', or even what the terms that emerge mean. There are no constants here. This means that 'the process of abstraction' is still a private process, and a mysterious one, too. It can't be translated back into a public language (which helps explain why MS has struggled to tell us what the obscure terms he keeps using mean). We can know nothing of this 'process', even assuming it actually exists.
In addition to the above, I added the following comments to Essay Three Part One:
If the 'process of abstraction' is indeed a 'mental activity', how would it be possible for each abstractor to know if they had arrived at the correct abstract concept of anything at all, or, indeed, anything in particular? Indeed, the notion that there could be a 'correct' abstraction loses all meaning if there is no way to check. With what, or with whom, could any of the supposed results be checked? Since this 'process' is supposed to take place in 'the mind', no one would have access to a single 'abstraction' produced by anyone else, nor would each abstractor have access to the 'abstractions' they produced only a few moments earlier. An appeal to memory would be to no avail since memories are also supposed to make use of abstractions, which would themselves be subject to the very same doubts. There is in fact no way to break into this 'abstractive circle', no way to check.
An appeal to the existence of a public language would be to no avail, either. Again, if each abstractor 'processes' their 'abstractions' in the privacy of their own heads, no one would be able to tell whether Abstractor A meant the same as Abstractor B by his or her use of the relevant words (or the relevant 'concepts' -- like "Substance", "Being", "Nothing", "The Population", "abstract labour", etc.) drawn from the vernacular, or from elsewhere. Definitions would be no help, either, since, just like memory, they also employ 'abstractions' -- so, they would also be subject to the same awkward questions. For how can Abstractor A know what Abstractor B means by any of the abstract terms he/she has processed without access to her/his 'mind'? Abstractor B can't point to anything which is 'the meaning' of a single abstraction he or she might be trying to define, so he/she can't even use an ostensive definition to help Abstractor A understand what he/she means (even if meanings could be established that way). No particular, or no singular term, can give the meaning of any abstraction or abstract term under scrutiny.... That being so, the same 'difficulties' would confront the general terms supposedly used in any definition used to that end, and so on....
And in Essay Three Part Two:
Despite this, the fact that inter-subjective agreement actually takes place (and countless times, everyday) suggests that this fanciful bourgeois individualist picture is as wide-of-the-mark as anything could be. Indeed, when the day-to-day requirements imposed by the material and social world on each active agent are factored in, this myth falls apart even faster than a WMD dossier.
The reasons for this aren't hard to find (if we assume for the purposes of argument that, per impossible, abstractionism were true): not only is it is highly unlikely that each mind would form the same general idea of the same objects and processes from its limited stock of data -- which is problematic enough in itself in view of the fact that no two people share exactly the same experience or draw the same conclusions from it -- the word "same" attracts identical difficulties (irony intended). Moreover, in its endeavour to explain generality, this traditional approach to knowledge involves an appeal to a concept that looks suspiciously general itself. If no two minds can check the supposed 'similarities' in or between anyone else's ideas -- howsoever dialectically orthodox those abstractors or these concepts happen to be -- then there is no way that a social process, if it is based on abstraction, could even make it onto the starting grid, let alone begin the race. Questions would naturally arise as to whether the 'same' ideas of anything (abstract, particular, concrete, general -- or even dialectical) had actually taken root in such socially-isolated dialectical minds. And these worries would persist until it had been established whether or not each abstractor had the 'same' idea about the word "same", let alone anything else.
And, how on earth might that be ascertained for goodness sake?
Worse still: given the 'dialectical' view of identity, this problem can't even be stated, let alone solved. The peremptory rejection of the LOI now returns to haunt DM-epistemology. By confusing a logical issue with an epistemological red-herring, the quest for what is supposed to be a 'superior form of dialectical knowledge' has now been trapped in a solipsistic dungeon.
[LOI = Law of Identity.]
Once more, that is because it has yet to be explained how any two dialectically-distracted minds could frame the same general, or even particular, idea of anything at all -- even before the dialectical juggernaut begins to roll --, or how a check might be made whether or not either of these intrepid abstractors had accomplished this miraculous feat correctly. And, that isn't so much because none of us has access to the mind of any other abstractor -- which, on this view, we haven't -- it is because it has yet to be established whether anyone even has the same idea of the word "correct"!15
Once more: how on earth might that be checked for goodness sake?
Again, it is no use looking to practice to rescue this failing theory, for it has yet to be established whether or not any two abstractors have the same abstract (or 'concrete') idea even of practice!
Once more, how on earth might that...?
[The reader is invited to finish that question for herself.]
By "socially-isolated" I don't mean to suggest that intrepid abstractors are literally isolated from one another -- as if they lived each on a desert island -- only that since their theory holds that knowledge (etc.) begins with whatever they manage to process in their own heads as individuals, that implies that when it comes to language and knowledge they might as well be literally isolated. As I have shown in the main body of this Essay: given this view of abstraction, it is in fact impossible to build a workable, or even a believable, account of the social nature of language and knowledge.... I have developed this point at length in Essay Thirteen Part One; readers are directed there for more details. [Also see Note 15.]
Again, the reader will no doubt have noticed that even if they reject my arguments for some reason, there is nothing in the above which even remotely resembles MS's caricature: "[Rosa] just knows abstraction = bad."
Moreover, and to re-iterate, it is no use appealing to 'thought', either, since we already know what our words mean before we use them to think, even supposing thinking takes place 'in the head'. But we haven't a clue what this 'process of abstraction' is, or how a given abstractor can know that what they mean by words like "population" or "value" (always assuming these words mean anything after they have been 'processed in the head') is the same as what other abstractors mean by typographically similar looking words they have also just 'abstracted in their heads'. Or even that they all mean even the same by the word "same"!
It is no good replying that Abstractor A could respond by saying "I mean by value, X, Y and Z", since "X", "Y" and "Z" are also abstract terms, and hence no less in need of explanation. As noted above, when we descend into the murky world of 'abstraction' there is no way out; all we have before us are yet more 'abstractions' of unknown meaning. Indeed, as Marx noted:
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc…. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction…." [The Holy Family, loc cit. Bold added.]
So, the only way to break into the abstractive circle is to "relinquish" these abstractions, and return to the use of ordinary language:
"The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
As I noted earlier (slightly edited):
By way of stark contrast, the approach adopted at this site and in this Essay rejects this metaphysical use of words in its entirety, and redirects our attention toward how we actually use language to speak about our psychological make-up and our cognitive states and abilities (which doesn't even remotely suggest we think with our brains or even that we do this 'in the head'). I have referenced dozens of books and articles (written from a Wittgensteinian perspective) that argue in support of this approach -- here and here, for example....
According to
this view, we are all socialised by our carers, siblings, peers, and teachers
to use language in the same way. We don't decide for ourselves what our words
mean (by a 'process of abstraction', or in any other way). That was the old idea --
you can see why this approach appealed to
bourgeois
individualist philosophers (like Locke, Berkeley and Hume). It still does,
and it remains the leading
view of language, which helps explain the dominating influence of cognitive psychology on the theory of mind
and language these days (even Chomsky has fallen for it with his
Cartesian
approach to language and mind). It is still the "ruling
idea" in the field. Wittgenstein
and Marx's approach is almost totally disdained -- and, alas, totally ignored by
those who claim to be Marxists!
So, given this new, Marx/Wittgenstein approach, we
are all taught what our words mean,
we don't teach ourselves 'in our heads' or anywhere else, for that matter. Hence, this approach begins
with the social
and works from there, not the other way round. At a stroke, this re-orientation eliminates all
the classic problems associated with abstractionism and representationalism....
MS has steadfastly refused to take that advice or even superficially tackle the fatal objections I have raised, and clearly thinks that if he ignores them, they either don't exist or will quietly go away.
If we were to ask the individual doing the calculation 'in her head' (the one MS mentioned) exactly what she had done, I have little doubt she'd be able to tell us -- perhaps along these lines: "I added two to another two and obtained four" -- and, if we further assume she were an expert mathematician, I am sure she could go into more detail, because she'd be rehearsing a publicly learnt skill which mathematicians already understand. But, no matter how many times I have asked MS, he still finds it impossible to say what he or other intrepid abstractors do 'in their heads' to obtain a single abstraction, or even how he knows he has reached the same result as anyone else (or even the same result he reached the day before). Or, for goodness sake, how anyone might know they had reached a correct result. He can't appeal to a public language we all already understand, nor can he refer to publicly ratified operations known to work before anyone even tried to do some 'abstracting in their heads', for the reasons outline above -- and in the following (also from Essay Three Part Two):
While we are at it, what exactly are the common features that can be abstracted from (or even attributed to) all shades of, say, the colour blue? Or, the notes that can be played on the bagpipes? Or, the taste of different wines? Or, the feel of silk, wool and nylon? Or, even the smell of roses?
[Of course, in several of these examples, the use of other general terms might come into play -- but they, too, will attract similar questions. For instance, an appeal might be made to certain tastes or aromas that can be detected in different wines -- for example, "a fruity bouquet". But, once more, what are the common features of "fruity bouquets"? One answer to that might involve a reference to the taste or smell of Lychees, for instance. But, what are the common features of the taste/smell of Lychees? And so on. I owe this point to Geach (1957).]
One of the more bizarre aspects of the mysterious process of abstraction (...which is in fact little different from the method adopted, or advocated, by many dialecticians --, and one that is rarely noticed) involves the drawing of an unintended analogy between the properties an object is supposed to have and clothing. Hence, in the 'abstractive process', as each outwardly unique distinguishing feature of a particular is 'peeled off' (or "disregarded") by 'the intellect', the true (general) form of the 'object' in question is supposed gradually to come into view -- but, of course, only in the 'mind's eye'. This 'mental disrobing ceremony' is, naturally, accessible only to those who are able to 'metaphysically undress' things like tables, chairs, cats, dogs, electrons and galaxies. Indeed, 'conceptual strippers' like this must be capable of deciding what has to be true not only of all the many examples of 'the same sort' (for instance, all cats) that haven't been ideally skinned in this way (by anyone, and not just themselves), but also of the many more that no human will ever experience -- based solely on a brief 'internal' inspection of a severely restricted sample of these ghostly spectres.
However, and this should hardly need pointing out, the properties of objects don't resemble apparel in any meaningful sense. If this had ever been an apt analogy then these 'metaphysical garments' (i.e., an object's properties) would be just as shareable as items of clothing. On that basis, dogs should be expected to be able to sing like larks, kettles recite the Gettysburg Address, and dialecticians accept criticism.
Nevertheless, the analogy with clothing is as inapt as any could be. For one thing, it is surely abnormal to imagine that clothing is causally related to -- or physically connected with -- the body of its wearer. Yet, the properties of an object are linked (in some way) to its constitution. Colour, for example, is intimately connected with the atomic and molecular structure of the item in question (and, of course, the light source). For another, while clothing may perhaps serve to hinder the appreciation of underlying form, an object's properties advertise it, they don't mask it. They are, so to speak, 'metaphysically transparent'.
This image, of course, undermines the necessary connection between each 'essence', each 'substance' and its 'accidents', its properties, threatening the 'rationality' of nature and society, discussed earlier. That would be a dagger at the heart of Lenin's attempt to appropriate Hegel's response to Hume's criticisms of Rationalist theories of causation.
Furthermore, and more absurdly, properties can't be peeled away from objects as part of a hidden, internal 'disrobing ceremony' of some description. Or, if they can, one would expect that the nature of each underlying 'object' should become clearer in all its naked glory as the proceedings unfold. In fact, we find the opposite turns out to be the case as each 'metaphysical burlesque show' proceeds.
If, for instance, a cat were to lose too many of its properties as it is 'mentally skinned', it would surely cease to be a cat. Clearly, this philosophically-flayed 'ex-cat' (now 'non-cat') would serve rather badly in any subsequent generalisation based upon it. Indeed, strip the average moggie of enough of its properties and it would be impossible to decide whether or not the rest of the abstractive process had been carried out on the same mammal, the same animal, or, for that matter, on the same physical object -- let alone the same idea of one and all.
Moreover, in the absence of any rules governing the process of abstraction (such as where to begin, which feature to abstract first, which second -- which never) one person's abstractions would surely differ from those of the rest of the abstractive community.
For instance, while Abstractor A might begin by ignoring (or attributing) Tiddles's engaging purr, B might start with her four legs, and C might commence with her shape. But, do we (should they?) ignore (or attribute) first, second or third a cat's colour, fur, fleas, whiskers, tail, intestines, age, number...?
And, as part of the abstractive process, which number relevant to each cat is to be put to one side (or attributed to it): the one cat, its two ears, its four legs, its dozen or so whiskers, or the several trillion atoms of which it is composed...?
And where do we stop? Are we to whittle-away (or attribute to it) its position on the mat, the last dozen or so things it did, its current relation to the Crab Nebula..., or what?
It could be objected that none of the above really matter; the results will be the same anyhow. But, how do we know? Is there a rule book to guide us? Is there an abstractionists' algorithm we all unconsciously 'follow', programmed into each of us at birth (or is it from conception?), a set of tried-and-tested instructions? Are we all instinctive abstractors, or do we need training? And, if there are metaphysical disrobing protocols determining the order in which Tiddles's qualities are to be paired away (or attributed to it), so that this process is to be executed correctly by the entire coterie of intrepid abstractors, when and where did they learn them? On the other hand, if there are no such protocols, how might each aspiring abstractor know if he or she had abstracted Tiddles the same way each time?
Do we all keep a secret Abstractor's Diary? An internal log of what we did the last time we thought about that cat -- or any cat?
Furthermore, even if there were clear -- let alone plausible answers to such questions --, another annoying 'difficulty' would block our path: it would still be impossible for anyone to check these abstractions to see if they tallied with anyone else's -- or, for that matter, ascertain whether or not they had 'abstracted' them right. In fact, the word "right" can gain no grip in such circumstances -- since, as Wittgenstein pointed out, whatever seems right will be right. But for something to be right it needs to be checked against a standard that isn't dependent on the subjective impression of the one judging. But, there is no such standard, here. Given this theory, everyone's notion of a cat will be private to each individual abstractor. They have no way of checking their abstractions with those of anyone else, which means, of course, there can be no standard abstract cat to serve as an exemplar, and hence nothing by means of which anyone's abstractions can be deemed right.
It won't do, either, for MS to argue in response that he isn't interested in the formation of abstract ideas of cats, or anything else in the non-social world because he doesn't agree with those who want to apply dialectics to nature. And yet --, always assuming, of course, that I am correct that this is the line he might take in response -- the above argument has nothing to do with dialectics applied to nature, but with the legitimacy of the 'process of abstraction' itself, which must be the same, surely, for objects and processes in general. Or are we to suppose that this 'process' is only legitimate in MS's eyes when it is applied to 'the population' or to 'value' but not to cats? But why not to cats? Other than drawing an arbitrary line between sets of cats and sets of human beings (i.e., 'the population'), what reason might he have for rejecting this 'process' when applied to the latter but not the former? And what happens when cats are bought and sold as commodities?
MS isn't alone here; Marx didn't say what he had done 'in his head', either, and nor have other Dialectical Marxists since. To date, this is still a well-kept secret. 'The process of abstraction' remains as big a mystery today as it was when it was first concocted by ruling-class hacks in Ancient Greece. It's also a mystery to MS; we can see this from the simple fact that no matter how many times he has been asked, not even he can tell us!
But, MS has a reply:
This is how Rosa reasons. Someone says they combined numbers in their head through the mental process of "addition." Rosa says "where did mysterious mental process take place?" The person says, "uhh, in my head." Rosa says "impossible!" "Show me where in your head?" The person, say "do what?" Rosa says, "metaphysical imposter!" The person says, "here, I’ll just right [sic] it down on paper." So the person writes down "2 + 2 = 4." Rosa says, "STOP!" "We can’t talk about that because it is proof." Rosa continues, "now, explain to me this mental process of so- called addition?" The person tells Rosa to go f*ck herself. Rosa claims victory.
This is not hyperbole. It is exactly what Rosa does in debate. In her last response, she rattles off quotes from Marx from her site, a partial list of the hundreds of times Marx talks about abstraction, and her commentary on it is as follows:
"In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does [i.e., abstract-MS] in the above passages; he merely gestures at it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians."
In fact, Marx actually does do what he says he does in the above passages. But, here’s the kicker, not in those passages. Marx was describing abstraction in various ways. To know if his supposed "gesture" is actually substantive, Rosa would have to do something that terrifies her: explain what Marx is doing in Capital. If the apparently foolish Marx isn’t being a fool when he claims abstracting is possible, then he is doing something other than abstracting (e.g., something other than analyzing X aspect of an object by provisionally making conceptual reductions for the purpose of analysis). Rosa needs to demonstrate what Marx is actually doing, if he is not abstracting as he says he claims. Here's her explanation:
"What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity."
That's it. That's all we get. Just as the perplexed person in the "so-called addition" example above was not allowed to demonstrate the mysterious process of addition, Marx is not allowed to demonstrate abstractions. That, again, would require working through Capital.
MS here assures us that Marx does indeed do what he says he does, but once again MS failed to fill in the details that Marx himself left out! So, it looks like MS has also been taken in by those mesmerising hand movements.
MS also seems to think that the few words of mine that he cites are all I have to say. Well, he would, wouldn't he? He hasn't read Essays Three Parts One and Two, where I explain what I mean by comments like those he quotes. I'm not going to reproduce that material here; I have included enough lengthy sections of material from those Essays as it is. MS can remain in his state of self-inflicted darkness.
But, there is more from MS:
Rosa continues (stitched together with the previous quote):
"What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity. Anyone who reads the above passage can actually see him doing this. They don't need to do a brain scan on Marx (even if he were still alive!), nor apply psychometric tests to follow his argument -- or, indeed, re-create these alleged 'abstractions', which they would have to do if the 'process of abstraction'; were something we all do privately in our heads."
See him doing what, exactly? What concepts? Abstract labour? I'd pay money for Rosa to explain this new concept by way "putting familiar words to use in new ways." But that would require textual analysis. That is, something Rose [sic] does not do.
I think we'd all 'pay money' if MS demonstrated he were capable of explaining what this 'process of abstraction' actually is. But, we have already seen that he can't even explain "abstract labour" without using yet more arcane jargon, which itself remains shrouded in mystery.
And there is more from the Magician's Apprentice:
Rosa, apparently, doesn't know this because she confuses Marx's criticism of bad abstractions as proof that Marx was against abstracting at one point in his life but somehow he forgot he was against it and mistakenly became a proponent of abstracting again. Oh, the webs we weave when we do not understand something! Treating what has been abstracted as if it existed in its one-sidedly abstracted state is what Marx was against. For example, he criticized Ricardo for doing just that with exchange-value, i.e., completely forgetting the use-value characteristic of the commodity in his analysis and treating commodities as if they were nothing but exchange-values.
MS employed the term "bad abstraction" several times without even once informing us how we might distinguish the "good" from the "bad" -- and good luck to anyone trying to tell those two apart, given the additional fact that both of them are buried deep 'inside' each head.
It could be claimed that MS did offer an example of 'bad abstractions' (quoting Marx -- using a passage I have also quoted several times in Essay Three, both Parts):
The most egregious example of bad abstractors is the Young Hegelians. Most of Marx’s ire in his early works is directed towards them. I think this is why Rosa associates all abstraction with "mythical" thinking. Marx heavily criticized Bauer and Co. for such poor thinking. In an earlier discussion, I brought up this quote from The Holy Family:
"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy –- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -– 'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'." [This is from here: Marx and Engels (1975), pp.54-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. The exact reference to this source can be found in the Bibliography to Essay Three Part Two -- RL.]
The absurdity of comparing this way of abstracting, reifying universals, to Marx's way of abstracting the economically important aspect of a commodity, as the bearer of value, should be glaringly apparent. For some reason, Rosa turns Marx's method of abstraction into an a priori equivalent of the Young Hegelian's method of abstraction. She doesn't think textual analysis of Capital is necessary to disprove Marx. She indiscriminately asserts abstraction = bad. No wonder Donna Quixote is on a crusade! Thankfully, Marx isn't doing this "mythical" process. Rosa smuggles it in and associates it with every conceivable act of abstraction in order to disprove the possibility of Marx abstracting, even if Marx believed and explicitly claimed he used "the power of abstraction." Thus, no matter what you say to her, Rosa will claim you are doing this Young Hegelian parlour trick and call you insulting names for good measure.
Marx never forgot he was against abstractions. He literally explains the difference between Hegelian (the one used in "the Fruit" passage) and his own method here:
“The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel* fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind.”
*The extent to which Hegel actually did this, as opposed to Hegel’s epigones, is debatable (see Tony Smith's The Logic of Marx’s Capital)
But MS failed quote the rest of this passage, the most important part of which is, perhaps, this:
"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975), pp.54-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. Bold added.]
So, Marx informs us that this isn't just any old abstractive process, it's Hegel's! This isn't just a 'process' the Young Hegelians used. They emulated their mentor, Hegel. In that case, if this is an example of 'bad abstraction', then Hegel's method delivers 'bad abstractions', too -- according to Marx, not Rosa, Marx.
Here is what I have added to Essay Three Part Two about this passage from The Holy Family:
This quotation almost completely undermines the DM-theory of abstraction. It is a pity that both Marx and Engels later seem to have lost the philosophical clarity of thought they displayed in this passage. In many respects it anticipates Frege and Wittgenstein's approach to abstract ideas, even if phrased in a completely different philosophical idiom.
It is worth underlining the fact that this passage exposes the sham nature of any 'dialectical circuit', not just Hegel's use of it. As Marx and Engels argue:
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc…. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….
"When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit.'" [Ibid., pp.58-60. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Marx and Engels are quite clear here: no amount of "careful empirical" checking can turn a creature of abstraction back into its concrete alter ego.
It is also important to note that Marx and Engels also anticipated the claim advanced in these Essays that abstract general ideas are the result of a syntactically inept re-interpretation of ordinary general terms (detailed in Part One of this Essay). As they themselves pointed out:
"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'….
"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'" [Ibid., p.60. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Here, Marx and Engels quite rightly point out that it is the distortion of language that gives life to metaphysical abstraction. Indeed, they underlined this approach to ordinary language (and the distortion it suffers in the hands of Philosophers) in The German Ideology (partially quoted earlier):
"For philosophers, one of the most difficult tasks is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they had to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.
"We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
The highlighted section of the last paragraph above might well serve as the guiding principle of this site. Indeed, Wittgenstein himself could almost have written it.
In his perceptive analysis of Metaphysics, the late Fraser Cowley had this to say about 'abstract universals':
"In the traditional doctrine, according to which one can both refer to universals and predicate them of particulars and other universals, a general term like 'lion' would signify or designate a universal. This universal would be predicated of a particular in such a sentence as 'This is a lion' and referred to in such a sentence as 'The lion is a creature of the cat family.' The lion being carnivorous and subject, I believe, to melancholy in captivity, that universal would [also] be carnivorous and subject to melancholy. And just as one can point to an animal and say 'this kind' or 'this species', so one should be able to point to one and say 'This universal comes from East Africa'…. But clearly 'universal' is not admissible in such contexts, and this shows that the logical syntax is quite different from that of 'kind,' 'sort,' 'type,' 'species,' and so on….
"Many people have tried in their metaphysical performances consciously or half consciously to avoid such nonsense by referring, for example, to the universal which is allegedly predicated in 'This beast is a lion,' by the expression 'lionhood.' Many similar malformations occur in philosophical writings -– doghood, thinghood, eventhood, and so on. They are formed by mistaken analogy with manhood, womanhood, girlhood, widowhood, bachelorhood, and of course not with neighborhood, hardihood, falsehood, likelihood, or Little Red Riding Hood." [Cowley (1991), p.92. Italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
Linguistic monstrosities like those above -- and worse -- litter the pages of (traditional) philosophical books and articles, in their Ancient, Medieval and Modern incarnations. For example, in a recent book on the nature of 'Time' we find the following rather bizarre phrases:
"Any property partly composed of presentness, apart from the two properties of pastness and futurity is not an A-property." [Smith (1993), p.6.]
Here we note with Frege that the powers of certain Asian deities have been channelled in order to create out of thin air the required temporal 'properties': "pastness", "presentness" and "futurity." There are countless pages of material like this in contemporary metaphysical literature, and not just those concerning the nature of 'Time'.
Sustained criticisms of abstract general concepts and ideas (as well as essentialism) can be found in the following: Hallett (1984, 1988, 1991) and Kennick (1972). A more general refutation of abstractionism is outlined in Geach (1957). A broad attack on the nature of abstract objects can be found in Teichmann (1992). [See also here.]
Nevertheless, attentive readers I am sure will have noticed that MS actually failed to explain how we might distinguish (or how even he distinguishes) 'bad' from 'good' abstractions. All he said was this:
The absurdity of comparing this way of abstracting, reifying universals, to Marx's way of abstracting the economically important aspect of a commodity, as the bearer of value, should be glaringly apparent.
Well, it might be obvious to MS but it isn't to us anti-Idealists.
Since much of MS's case rests on this distinction, one would have thought that he'd be a little more specific, for if all abstractions are 'bad', then his attempt to mystify Das Kapital falls before it even reaches the first hurdle.
So, we still haven't a clue what distinguishes 'good' from 'bad' abstractions.
[Readers should resist the temptation to conclude that, for MS, what actually distinguishes these abstractions is that the 'bad' ones are simply those he disagrees with, or which he disapproves of, while the 'good' ones are those found on the other side of that subjective divide.]
But, what about this?
For some reason, Rosa turns Marx's method of abstraction into an a priori equivalent of the Young Hegelian's method of abstraction. She doesn't think textual analysis of Capital is necessary to disprove Marx. She indiscriminately asserts abstraction = bad. No wonder Donna Quixote is on a crusade! Thankfully, Marx isn't doing this "mythical" process. Rosa smuggles it in and associates it with every conceivable act of abstraction in order to disprove the possibility of Marx abstracting, even if Marx believed and explicitly claimed he used "the power of abstraction." Thus, no matter what you say to her, Rosa will claim you are doing this Young Hegelian parlour trick and call you insulting names for good measure.
Well, no, I have simply asked MS to explain this mysterious process, which he has signally failed to do -- all the while repeatedly blaming me for his failure to do so. He has also failed to explain exactly what Marx did 'in his head' and how he knows so much about it -- that is, without using a brain scan (even if scans could reveal this).
MS quotes Marx again (but, from a book Marx chose not to publish!):
Marx never forgot he was against abstractions. He literally explains the difference between Hegelian (the one used in "the Fruit" passage) and his own method here:
“The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel* fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind.”
*The extent to which Hegel actually did this, as opposed to Hegel’s epigones, is debatable (see Tony Smith's The Logic of Marx’s Capital).
First, all this takes place "in the mind". So, we can know nothing about it -- as I have repeatedly argued. MS has yet to come to terms with this insurmountable practical and theoretical obstacle. Furthermore, in the above footnote, MS claims that it is a moot point whether Hegel or Hegel's epigones were responsible for these moves, but if MS (or even the late Tony Smith) end up questioning Hegel on this specific point, how can we trust a single thing they say about that Hermetic Mystic?
Indeed, we already know that MS blotted his Hegelian copy book when he confused Hegel's method with Fichte's. [On that, see here and here.]
Be this as it may, here is what Marx had to say about moving from the 'abstract' to the 'concrete' (in the part of The Holy Family that MS thought it wise not to quote):
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc…. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction….
"When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit.'" [Loc cit., pp.58-60. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site.]
So, according to Marx, not Rosa, Marx: "[I]t is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction [and that must be 'the concrete' -- RL] without relinquishing the abstraction….". No wonder MS omitted it!
Another less well appreciated fact is that The Holy Family was published, while Grundrisse wasn't. From that alone may perhaps discern Marx's more considered opinions.
Second, in the passage quoted above (from Grundrisse), Marx still doesn't tell us what he did. If he did anything. it was all buried 'in his mind', forever lost to view and to any checking. What is worse, MS himself has yet to explain how any of these dialectical gyrations might be performed 'in the mind' by anyone else, so that they might imitate Marx's moves in order to check whether or not they arrived at 'the same result' as Marx, or even one another. And before they manage to do even that, we have yet to be told how these intrepid abstractors might decide these are the 'right results'? Indeed, in order to know that the 'abstractions' that finally emerge at the end are the 'right ones', one would have to know beforehand what the right 'abstractions' might look like, or the criteria they'd have to meet for them to be the 'right ones'. But, how is that to be determined ahead of time? The opposite conclusion -- that one needn't know what the 'right abstractions' are beforehand, or even if there are any such -- would be like supposing one could hit the bullseye of a target without knowing if there was a bullseye to begin with. Or worse: without even knowing what a bullseye actually is!
In order to check the veracity, or even the consistency, of any of the supposed results of this mysterious 'process', they would surely have to be repeatable -- as well as actually having been repeated -- and not just once. But how might anyone repeat this 'process' if no one seems to know anything about it -- or they refuse to say. Are these 'mental feats' unreproducible, unlike experiments preformed by genuine scientists? And it's no good MS intoning reassuring homilies about 'mental arithmetic', for reasons given earlier (here and here). So, and once again, we still remain in the dark about this mysterious 'process', and until MS comes clean, we may justly conclude that (i) He too is in the dark, and (ii) All this bluster is simply an attempt to whistle in the dark -- in order to keep his spirits up.
Finally, as I have also shown at my site, if we were foolish enough to accept the validity of this mysterious 'process', nothing would or could actually be 'concrete'. [Readers are directed to Essays Three Part One, Ten Part One (Sections Five and Six) and Eleven Part Two (here and here), for more details.]
But, what about this?
Abstracting is no more or less "privately in our heads" than adding or subtracting or reading or thinking about anything as individual subjects. Why does Rosa make it into some metaphysical solipsistic impossibility? I literally have no clue after pouring over her site for hours. Actually, I think I might know why or I'm forced to infer why. Abstractions are her lightning. Instead of treating them like any other form of thinking, Rosa "metaphysicalizes" abstractions into something radically different than any other commonplace way of thinking. Then she projects her own "metaphysicalist" interpretation onto anyone who says they are abstracting. By definition, now, whoever claims they are abstracting, for example, the use-value characteristic of commodity away in order to examine the commodity in its economic form as an exchange-value, is claiming to do what is impossible. This is precisely the abstraction Marx makes at the beginning of Capital. And, in the current context, this is precisely what Marx means by abstraction: one-sidedly focusing on a particular aspect of an object that does not actually exist in the one-sided manner in which it is being investigated.
Rosa, apparently, doesn't know this because she confuses Marx's criticism of bad abstractions as proof that Marx was against abstracting at one point in his life but somehow he forgot he was against it and mistakenly became a proponent of abstracting again. Oh, the webs we weave when we do not understand something! Treating what has been abstracted as if it existed in its one-sidedly abstracted state is what Marx was against. For example, he criticized Ricardo for doing just that with exchange-value, i.e., completely forgetting the use-value characteristic of the commodity in his analysis and treating commodities as if they were nothing but exchange-values.
First, as already pointed out, the reason why adding, subtracting, reading and thinking aren't private is that (a) we have a public language in which these can be and are typically performed, and (b) they are all based on skills we were taught in the open, in a public arena. [That is just another corollary of the social nature of language and knowledge.]. Neither of these is the case with the mysterious 'process of abstraction'. That is why it has been labelled a private process, about which no one can know anything (amply confirmed by MS, who manifestly knows nothing about this process -- or if he does, he has kept that fact well hidden). Of course, MS could clear all this up quite easily, silencing all those who have criticised this 'process' and who have long doubted it even exists. He could:
(i) Describe in detail every single step he and others take when they 'abstract' anything -- that is, he could tell us what they all actually do 'in their heads', perhaps asking other abstractors to confirm that they too take precisely those steps and no others, and in that order.
(ii) Inform us where they all learnt this "skill'. Was it at their 'mother's knee'? At school? College?
(iii) Let us know if any of them have diplomas/certificates in this skill, maybe like those that children receive as they learn to add or subtract, prove they can string coherent thoughts together (by writing something), or even when they read well in front of class? Have any of them 'abstracted in front of class', for example? Are there advanced diplomas, or even degrees, in this ancient art, as there are in mathematics and writing/thought?
(iv) Explain how any of them know there are 'correct abstractions' out there (or 'in there'?) that might actually emerge at the end, and how they know they are the right ones.
(v) Explain how they know they all did exactly what Marx did, even though he, too, remained tight-lipped about it.
And:
(vi) Explain how all these intrepid abstractors know they have arrived at the same result. Or even that they all mean the same by the abstract term "same"? [And good luck with that one!]
These are details that even the greatest philosophers and psychologists in history have omitted for nigh in 2400 years. Is MS capable of rising to that particular challenge? Sad though this is to have to report, but confidence in his ability to do so diminishes with each reply, with each prevarication.
Second, the distinction between 'bad' and 'good' abstractions was an invention of those who want to mystify Marx. Marx nowhere refers to this distinction. Indeed, his most detailed published comments on this topic reject 'abstraction' tout court. In The Holy Family, Marx doesn't even vaguely hint that there is a superior form of abstraction (the 'good' ones), which he himself uses. He rejected the lot.
Here is the entire passage so readers can check for themselves:
"Now that Critical Criticism as the tranquillity of knowledge has 'made' all the mass-type 'antitheses its concern', has mastered all reality in the form of categories and dissolved all human activity into speculative dialectics, we shall see it produce the world again out of speculative dialectics. It goes without saying that if the miracles of the Critically speculative creation of the world are not to be 'desecrated', they can be presented to the profane mass only in the form of mysteries. Critical Criticism therefore appears in the incarnation of Vishnu-Szeliga as a mystery-monger.... ["Szeliga" was the pseudonym of a young Hegelian, Franz Zychlinski -- RL]
"The mystery of the Critical presentation of the Mystéres de Paris is the mystery of speculative, of Hegelian construction. Once Herr Szeliga has proclaimed that 'degeneracy within civilisation' and rightlessness in the state are 'mysteries', i.e., has dissolved them in the category 'mystery', he lets 'mystery' begin its speculative career. A few words will suffice to characterise speculative construction in general. Herr Szeliga's treatment of the Mystéres de Paris will give the application in detail.
"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy –- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -– 'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'.
"By this method one attains no particular wealth of definition. The mineralogist whose whole science was limited to the statement that all minerals are really 'the Mineral' would be a mineralogist only in his imagination. For every mineral the speculative mineralogist says 'the Mineral', and his science is reduced to repeating this word as many times as there are real minerals.
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc. It is as hard to produce real fruits from the abstract idea 'the Fruit' as it is easy to produce this abstract idea from real fruits. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction.
"The speculative philosopher therefore relinquishes the abstraction 'the Fruit', but in a speculative, mystical fashion -- with the appearance of not relinquishing it. Thus it is really only in appearance that he rises above his abstraction. He argues somewhat as follows:
"If apples, pears, almonds and strawberries are really nothing but 'the Substance', 'the Fruit', the question arises: Why does 'the Fruit' manifest itself to me sometimes as an apple, sometimes as a pear, sometimes as an almond? Why this semblance of diversity which so obviously contradicts my speculative conception of Unity, 'the Substance', 'the Fruit'?
"This, answers the speculative philosopher, is because 'the Fruit' is not dead, undifferentiated, motionless, but a living, self-differentiating, moving essence. The diversity of the ordinary fruits is significant not only for my sensuous understanding, but also for 'the Fruit' itself and for speculative reason. The different ordinary fruits are different manifestations of the life of the 'one Fruit'; they are crystallisations of 'the Fruit' itself. Thus in the apple 'the Fruit' gives itself an apple-like existence, in the pear a pear-like existence. We must therefore no longer say, as one might from the standpoint of the Substance: a pear is 'the Fruit', an apple is 'the Fruit', an almond is 'the Fruit', but rather 'the Fruit' presents itself as a pear, 'the Fruit' presents itself as an apple, 'the Fruit' presents itself as an almond; and the differences which distinguish apples, pears and almonds from one another are the self-differentiations of 'the Fruit' and make the particular fruits different members of the life-process of 'the Fruit'. Thus 'the Fruit' is no longer an empty undifferentiated unity; it is oneness as allness, as 'totality' of fruits, which constitute an 'organically linked series of members'. In every member of that series 'the Fruit' gives itself a more developed, more explicit existence, until finally, as the 'summary' of all fruits, it is at the same time the living unity which contains all those fruits dissolved in itself just as it produces them from within itself, just as, for instance, all the limbs of the body are constantly dissolved in and constantly produced out of the blood.
"We see that if the Christian religion knows only one Incarnation of God, speculative philosophy has as many incarnations as there are things, just as it has here in every fruit an incarnation of the Substance, of the Absolute Fruit. The main interest for the speculative philosopher is therefore to produce the existence of the real ordinary fruits and to say in some mysterious way that there are apples, pears, almonds and raisins. But the apples, pears, almonds and raisins that we rediscover in the speculative world are nothing but semblances of apples, semblances of pears, semblances of almonds and semblances of raisins, for they are moments in the life of 'the Fruit', this abstract creation of the mind, and therefore themselves abstract creations of the mind. Hence what is delightful in this speculation is to rediscover all the real fruits there, but as fruits which have a higher mystical significance, which have grown out of the ether of your brain and not out of the material earth, which are incarnations of 'the Fruit', of the Absolute Subject. When you return from the abstraction, the supernatural creation of the mind, 'the Fruit', to real natural fruits, you give on the contrary the natural fruits a supernatural significance and transform them into sheer abstractions. Your main interest is then to point out the unity of 'the Fruit' in all the manifestations of its life…that is, to show the mystical interconnection between these fruits, how in each of them 'the Fruit' realizes itself by degrees and necessarily progresses, for instance, from its existence as a raisin to its existence as an almond. Hence the value of the ordinary fruits no longer consists in their natural qualities, but in their speculative quality, which gives each of them a definite place in the life-process of 'the Absolute Fruit'.
"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'. And in regard to every object the existence of which he expresses, he accomplishes an act of creation.
"It goes without saying that the speculative philosopher accomplishes this continuous creation only by presenting universally known qualities of the apple, the pear, etc., which exist in reality, as determining features invented by him, by giving the names of the real things to what abstract reason alone can create, to abstract formulas of reason, finally, by declaring his own activity, by which he passes from the idea of an apple to the idea of a pear, to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject, 'the Fruit.'
"In the speculative way of speaking, this operation is called comprehending Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person, and this comprehension constitutes the essential character of Hegel's method." [Marx and Engels (1975), pp.54-60. Quotation marks altered to conform with the conventions adopted at this site. Italic emphases in the original. Bold added.]
Readers should now be in a position to decide for themselves whether there is even a hint, suggestion or vague intimation that there might be some 'good' abstractions hidden somewhere between the lines, in the above.
Moreover, we already know Marx condemned abstraction as a distortion of ordinary language:
"The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
So, and once again, MS needs to pick a fight with Marx, not me, for undermining his repeated attempts to mystify Das Kapital.
Third, in relation to the following comment by MS:
Instead of treating them like any other form of thinking, Rosa "metaphysicalizes" abstractions into something radically different than any other commonplace way of thinking. Then she projects her own "metaphysicalist" interpretation onto anyone who says they are abstracting. By definition, now, whoever claims they are abstracting, for example, the use-value characteristic of commodity away in order to examine the commodity in its economic form as an exchange-value, is claiming to do what is impossible. This is precisely the abstraction Marx makes at the beginning of Capital. And, in the current context, this is precisely what Marx means by abstraction: one-sidedly focusing on a particular aspect of an object that does not actually exist in the one-sided manner in which it is being investigated.
Rosa, apparently, doesn't know this because she confuses Marx's criticism of bad abstractions as proof that Marx was against abstracting at one point in his life but somehow he forgot he was against it and mistakenly became a proponent of abstracting again. Oh, the webs we weave when we do not understand something! Treating what has been abstracted as if it existed in its one-sidedly abstracted state is what Marx was against. For example, he criticized Ricardo for doing just that with exchange-value, i.e., completely forgetting the use-value characteristic of the commodity in his analysis and treating commodities as if they were nothing but exchange-values.
I respond as follows: But, abstraction isn't like "any other form of thinking". It remains a mysterious process about which we know nothing, and certainly MS has yet to reveal its inner secrets -- whereas ordinary thinking, as Marx describes it, typically takes place in the open, in a public arena, and isn't based on linguistic distortion:
"The ordinary man does not think he is saying anything extraordinary when he states that there are apples and pears. But when the philosopher expresses their existence in the speculative way he says something extraordinary. He performs a miracle by producing the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit'. And in regard to every object the existence of which he expresses, he accomplishes an act of creation." [The Holy Family. Loc cit. Bold alone added.]
"The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
[I merely add that the "philosophers" to whom Marx refers above were in fact metaphysicians. Admittedly, dialecticians have a non-standard, idiosyncratic understanding of the word "metaphysics. I have defended my interpretation of that term, which doesn't differ from the way it has been understood almost from the day it was first invented by Aristotle, here. So this isn't my invention.]
Finally, here is MS again from the above passage:
This is precisely the abstraction Marx makes at the beginning of Capital. And, in the current context, this is precisely what Marx means by abstraction: one-sidedly focusing on a particular aspect of an object that does not actually exist in the one-sided manner in which it is being investigated.
"One-sided" is another favourite buzz-word beloved of Hegel-groupies, even though they seldom tell us what they mean by it (yet another mystery to add to the ever growing pile). I have dealt with its surprising, if not alarming, sceptical implications in Essay Ten Part One, Sections Four and Five; readers are directed there for more details.
Nevertheless, MS is reduced to guessing my position (and, once again putting words in my mouth while he is at it) since he hasn't read my Essays. Of course, no one is forced to read my work (it is dauntingly long, now over 3.5 million words -- the equivalent of a 7000 page book(!), but it is still a fraction of Marx and Engels's work), but only the recklessly foolish would pass judgement on something, or even speculate about it, from a position of extremely limited knowledge. That would be rather like someone who, having read parts of Wages, Price and Profit, thought she could pass informed comment on Das Kapital.
[And, no, I am not comparing myself to Marx again, merely pointing out the obvious: that it is foolish in the extreme to pass comment on another's work after having read -- or having skim read -- less than 5% of it!]
Again, there is more; here is MS (but, note the esoteric language in the first sentence!):
What Rosa probably doesn't know: the mystifications of the value-form of production apparently replicated this absolute idealist inversion in the universal equivalent form of exchange. From the 1st German Edition:
"It is as if alongside and external to lions, tigers, rabbits, and all other actual animals, which form when grouped together the various kinds, species, subspecies, families etc. of the animal kingdom, there existed also in addition the animal, the individual incarnation of the entire animal kingdom. Such a particular which contains within itself all really present species of the same entity is a universal (like animal, god, etc.)."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
If Rosa wants to have this passage explained, she will have to engage the text with me. Her vulgar, crass materialist, crude empiricist, and reductionist interpretation lacks the conceptual framework to understand passages such as this one. I'm sure she will deny all of those descriptions. They are educated conjectures on my part, and necessarily conjectural because Rosa does not discuss Capital. It would turn Donna Quixote's Windmill into an actual Knight and she does not want that. Trust me.
To be honest, I'd be truly honoured to have The Great Teacher Himself explain all of this, and more, to little old me -- always assuming my very limited, partially-evolved, human intellect is capable of being elevated to the Empyrean Level of comprehension attained by Saint MS -- but I have asked Him to explain similar things several times, hoping He'd be gracious enough to descend from Mt Olympus and deign to enlighten me, and, indeed, the rest of prostrate humanity, concerning the Hidden Secrets that He and other Hermetic Mystics somehow manage to find in Das Kapital (and do so in language that us mere mortals can comprehend) -- which, of course, only those on His Plane of Enlightenment seem capable of grasping. But, and alas, all He does is 'explain' the last batch of arcane jargon with another barrage of equal obscurity. Sadly, after a dozen or so attempts to elicit the Good News from the Dialectical Oracle, He appears to be psychologically, or perhaps even physically, incapable of communicating with any level of clarity such Recondite Verities to us ordinary denizens of this planet. So I retain a healthy scepticism that, despite His awe-inspiring and Semi-Divine intellect, He is quite up to the task. One can only hope that Being Itself grants Him the capacity to descend to our debased level and open our minds, otherwise, just like me, humanity will remain forever lost in impenetrable fog, enveloped in everlasting, stygian gloom.
MS, again from On High:
Part of the frustration with debating Rosa stems from comments such as these:
Rosa:
"What I have argued is that instead of bothering with these obscure 'mental objects' (these mysterious 'abstractions' supposedly locked away in a socially-atomised brain), we should concentrate on the use of ordinary common nouns, employed in an open, public, and checkable arena."
Capital is the arena where Marx's abstractions are in open air. He abstracts in process of rationally reconstructing the capitalist mode of production. She will not step into the arena with me.
I could go on forever with these bad faith or ignorant statements (ignorant as in lack of knowledge of Marx, not stupid):
And yet, these 'abstractions' are the sole product of mysterious mental gyrations about which we can know nothing, and neither can MS. Any attempt to reproduce them on the page would be no help, either, for we have no idea what these enigmatic words mean -- and MS steadfastly refuses to tell us (which suggests that even he doesn't know).
Moreover, since these 'abstractions' are the product of distorted language, it turns out they are in fact impossible to explain -- so no wonder MS struggles with the simplest of them. But, don't take my word for it; here is Marx himself (in a passage that is worth repeating yet again):
"The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
As should seem obvious, "distorted language" is impossible to explain.
In which case, MS might just as well have written the following:
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One two! One two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
[The Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll.]
MS:
Rosa:
"So, their socialisation in the teachings of religion, or even Traditional Philosophy, before they became Marxists, pre-disposes these comrades to look for hidden 'essences', or a secret world lying behind 'appearances', since their early socialisation in bourgeois society taught them that that is what genuine philosophy is all about."
If old Rosa Freud actually read Marx she’d know he demystified reality using those terms:
"The finished configuration of economic relations, as these are visible on the surface, in their actual existence, and therefore also in the notions with which the bearers and agents of those relations seek to gain an understanding of them is very different from the configuration of their inner core, which is essential but concealed, and the concept corresponding to it." (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, pg. 311)
Value is an essential but concealed feature of the commodity-form. As I have explained to Rosa multiple times, this "value essence" that is concealed necessarily appears in the form of money, i.e., as something other than itself. Marx is following Hegel here. A value "essence" isn’t "in a secret world lying behind 'appearances'". It has no reality except in its appearance. However, taking the appearances to be exhaustive of reality is a mistake (see TSV Part 3 on S. Bailey).
Readers will now perhaps more fully appreciate why I said MS was incapable of explaining a single one of these 'abstractions' without inflicting on me and his other unfortunate readers yet more recondite verbiage -- which he also fails to explain. I have asked him several times to explain "essence", for example, but he steadfastly refuses to do so.
It is now plain he can't.
[I have debunked the bogus traditional distinction between 'appearance' and 'essence'/'reality' (and explained why ruling-class hacks invented it in Ancient Greece) in Essays Three Part Two, and Twelve Parts Two to Seven (summarised here). It is now clear that MS only accepts this boss-class dichotomy since he too had been socialised into thinking it a valid distinction. In this way, the ideas of the ruling-class have come to rule the ideas of 'Systematic Dialecticians' like MS.]
MS continues, busily digging an even deeper hole for himself:
All of these ad hominem arguments by Rosa are confused, to say the least. Reading Marx is, dare I say, essential to correct them.
First, MS has confused ad hominem with personalised criticism. I have attempted to clear up that confusion in an answer I posted on Quora, which MS actually up-voted, perhaps not fully digesting its message. Ad hominem has nothing to do with personalising criticism or argument. Here is part of what I wrote in that answer (which was a response to the following question: "Are there any non-adhominen (sic) arguments against the Presidency of Donald Trump?" -- slightly edited):
With all due respect, like so many others who post on the Internet I think you have confused ad hominem with some form of personal attack, abuse, or the disparagement of those with whom one is arguing or conversing.
An ad hominem argument commits what is called an informal logical fallacy, in which case, it has to involve an invalid inference of some sort. It is committed whenever someone infers from an assumed or actual characteristic, idiosyncrasy, failing or foible in another to the conclusion that what they say is false — or even true — just because of that. Ad hominem has nothing to do with merely personalising a criticism, but with what can be 'inferred' from that personalisation alone. It has nothing to do with abuse simpliciter, either; one can infer, ad hominem, from praise just as much as from abuse. It is the inference that is ad hominem, not the personalisation, the abuse, or even the praise. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a logical fallacy. That is why it depends on inference, not abuse or praise on their own.
Hence, the following would be plain and simple abuse (where "NN" and "NM" stand for the name of some individual):
"NN is an idiot".
That isn't ad hominem; it's just abuse.
This would be arguing ad hominem:
"NN is an idiot, therefore, what he says is false".
So would this:
"NM is intelligent, therefore, what she says is true."
[In real life, ad hominem arguments are often far more complex. Argument from authority is also a form of ad hominem.]
This perhaps conforms a suspicion aired earlier: MS skim reads much that I have written. How else to explain his up-voting my Quora answer while failing to take note of its content?
Furthermore, I don't argue that 'dialectics' is false because of its ruling-class origin, either (that would be to commit the Genetic Fallacy). In fact, I nowhere argue that 'dialectics' is false. My argument is: 'Dialectics' is far too vague and confused even to be described as false, let alone true; it doesn't make it that far. So, MS's repeated failure to say what he means with any clarity is no surprise.
In which case, I am not inferring the falsehood of 'dialectics' from its class-compromised origin; as it stands, it is incapable of being false -- or even true. No more than the Jabberwocky is.
In fact, I spend quite some time (in most of my Essays) tracing this 'theory'/'method' back to its origin in well-entrenched ruling-class forms-of-thought ('abstractionism' being just one of them) in order to show that Marx was right when he said that the ideas of the ruling-class are always the ruling ideas -- just as they now rule erstwhile Marxists. In Essay Nine Part Two (repeated above) I explain the ease with which these alien-class thought-forms were imported into Marxism by dialecticians, tracing this back to their class origin, class position and their socialisation before they became Marxists. In doing so, I rely on Marx's assertion that "social being determines consciousness" -- so I didn't get this idea from 'armchair psychology', as MS alleges, but from Marx himself.
[In addition, I have also responded to the objection that this is just 'crude materialism', here.]
Moreover, I don't expect those who "suffer from 'dialectics'" to agree with me -- quite the reverse in fact, I expect hostility. Just like the open and honest mystics who fill the mosques, synagogues, churches, and gospel halls, 'Marxist dialectical mystics' cling to this way of looking at society and the world for non-rational reasons (also exposed earlier).
Indeed, as I pointed out above:
However, since religious belief will only disappear when its social, economic and political roots no longer exist, the hold this Hermetic creed has on the majority of dialectically-distracted comrades will only relent when the working-class succeed in changing society for them, thus saving DM-fans from themselves. Dialecticians will therefore have to be rescued from this mystical fog by a successful workers' revolution. They have shown they are incapable of this simple act.
My Essays can no more do this than we can hope to argue the god-botherers of this world out of their faith. This means that, just like religionists, dialecticians will require a very real, materialist cure -- not an Ideal one -- provided by the revolutionary proletariat. So, these Essays will only make sense to such comrades when the Owl of Minerva has finally been shot, plucked and then stuffed by a workers' militia -- if and when that happens.
Nothing short of this will bring to an end to alienation that induces comrades to lose themselves in dialectical daydreams. Of course, if the above revolution never happens, dialectical mystics will doubtless continue to perfect their ostrich impressions right up until the point where the planet finally sinks into barbarism. These Essays won't shift them in the least, for such comrades cling to dialectics for non-rational reasons. [On that, see here, here, here, and Note 13a2.]
That helps explain why MS and I have been arguing past each other from day one.
MS, again:
The Social Reduction of Private Concrete Labour to Universal Abstract Labour (value) or Real Abstraction
I have mentioned this social process multiple times to Rosa and sent her links to a Quora answer of mine that I know for a fact she had already read, but she still, in her bad faith manner of arguing, pretends I pulled this notion out of thin air without justification. The first time she showed incredulity towards this claim I was a bit nonplussed. I thought to myself, "can this person who claims to be a Marxist for over 30 years really not have not read Marx all this time?" She pulls quotes from Marx’s works on her site. Surely she’s read his works, right? I suspect she's read Capital once a long time ago and forgotten everything about it. Capital is not the kind [of] text you can casually consume. It takes effort and a bit of humility, something our Revolutionary Errant is in short supply of.
I have nowhere argued that MS pulled these ideas 'out of thin air' (this is yet another attempt by MS to put words in my mouth); what I have alleged is that, alongside all too many others, he has imported them from a well-entrenched ruling-class tradition.
MS:
From Rosa’s last response:
"If 'abstraction' takes place 'in the mind' (and if we ignore all the sceptical implications and confusions that that idea brings in its train, partially outlined earlier) one might well wonder how a social practice can do this 'in the mind', too, and not outside the mind, which it will have to do if it is to have any effect on commodity production and exchange. Is society conscious? In a recent e-mail, MS asserted that capital has certain "purposes". And here we seen where importing anything from Hegel has landed us, we end up mystifying capital as if it were a human being!"
As she knows, because I have explained to her multiple times, the term abstraction is multivalent for Marx, as are most of the terms Marx used (e.g., value, money, capital, etc.). Her crude empiricism and reductionist method of interpretation cannot fathom such a use of terms. Rosa's close[d]-minded system of thought apparently requires univalent definitions of common usage. If abstracting is a mental process, then it is always, everywhere, and for all times nothing but a mental process for her. It is literally impossible to understand Capital if you think this way. Is there any wonder why she never says anything about Capital?
Can anyone see in there any attempt to explain how Capital is even capable of having any purposes? No doubt perceptive readers will have spotted once again how MS blames his failure to explain himself on me.
MS then quotes several passage from Marx that also fail to explain how Capital can have purposes. I won't include them in this reply, but readers can check for themselves since they have been reproduced here.
[If anyone manages to find anything in those passages that resembles an explanation of how capitalism can mimic a human being, and have purposes, please e-mail me! I'll forward it to MS; he needs all the help he can get.]
MS:
This is a mystery to Rosa; therefore, it as a mystery in itself. Because she cannot understand it, it cannot be understood. It makes no sense to her, so it is nonsense.
I am happy to admit it is a mystery to me how capitalism can have purposes, and, what is more, I'm in good company, too, since it is clearly a mystery to MS! I have asked him several times to explain it to me, but all I ever receive is no explanation, just more jargon! As I have predicted more than once.
It is way past giving MS the benefit of the doubt on this.
MS:
The reason Marx abstracts the exchange-value character of the commodity from the use-value character of the commodity in his head is precisely because modern society has already made this reduction through the process of exchange in reality. Abstraction isn’t some arbitrary process. Marx is "reproducing the concrete in thought." Does Rosa not understand that Marx appropriated the concrete in thought before he rationally reconstructed it in Capital? She arbitrarily posits abstractions as impossibly mysterious things that can’t actually exist anywhere, either in a person's head or as a social process. No wonder both types of abstractions are mysterious to her. In truth, it only requires a modest bit effort to understand: X happens in the world; Y happens in the mind when thinking about X that happened in the world. Marx is materialist, not a crude materialist like Rosa. This means that, for Marx, actual material and social processes occur prior to and independent of our thought processes about them. Marx is capturing the intelligibly of a "mystifying" social reality in Capital by moving from the most abstract categories, such as value, to the most concrete categories, such as price of production. This method demystifies the inverted picture of the world that is presented to the everyday consciousness of individuals, whose actions create the abstractions (economic categories) that rule over them. I have no clue what Rosa thinks Marx is doing? Gesturing? That is the only mystery going on here.
Once again, even though MS admits Marx does all this "in his head", he makes no attempt to explain how he can possibly know what these 'abstractions' are. Using the phrase "reproducing the concrete in thought" is no help at all if we don't yet know what the word "concrete" means, let alone what 'reproducing it in thought' amounts to, either. Is it different from "appropriating the concrete thought"? Who can say? And even if we knew the answer to these questions, how does MS know that Marx actually did this? If this is indeed done in 'thought' then it is hidden from view, and so can't be checked. And, it is no good appealing to mental arithmetic, again, or to any other thoughts we might have. As I have already pointed out, they use terms drawn from everyday language and mathematical practice that were already understood before they were used, unlike the 'abstractions' processed in the way that MS surmises. That isn't so with the opaque term "concrete", let alone when it is "reproduced/appropriated in thought" -- whatever that means!
But, what about this?
She arbitrarily posits abstractions as impossibly mysterious things that can’t actually exist anywhere, either in a person's head or as a social process. No wonder both types of abstractions are mysterious to her.
I have 'posited' no such thing (and MS doesn't quote me to that effect either, since he can't), for to do so would be to advance a metaphysical theory of my own (and I reject all such theories as incoherent non-sense). What I have done is ask (a) where these 'abstractions' exist, (b) in what form they exist, and (c) how MS knows so much about them all the while refusing to answer any questions about the obscure terms he keeps using (that is, without using even more recondite jargon in his endeavour to do so)?
Once again, we see MS inventing words to put in my mouth.
Or this?
X happens in the world; Y happens in the mind when thinking about X that happened in the world.
But, even if we accept this rather crude theory (but, is it a theory of perception, cogitation, 'inner representation', or what?), we can know nothing about this "Y". Speaking or writing about 'it' might very well transliterate it into language, but, as we have already seen, that itself is a dead end. As, indeed, Marx reminded us (in two passages that are well worth repeating):
"The philosophers would only have to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, to recognise it as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life." [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added; italic emphases in the original.]
"Having reduced the different real fruits to the one 'fruit' of abstraction -– 'the Fruit', speculation must, in order to attain some semblance of real content, try somehow to find its way back from 'the Fruit', from the Substance to the diverse, ordinary real fruits, the pear, the apple, the almond etc…. Indeed, it is impossible to arrive at the opposite of an abstraction without relinquishing the abstraction…." [The Holy Family, loc cit. Bold added.]
Abstractions depend on distorted language (whose terms therefore, and because of that, have indeterminate meaning, if they have any at all), which means this is no help whatsoever. In fact, according to Marx, these abstractions cease to be abstractions -- or, rather, any attempt to turn these abstractions into their opposite (i.e., into 'the concrete') relinquishes (i.e., cancels) the abstraction, vitiating the entire exercise.
MS then added a rather long passage (reproduced in Appendix E), prefacing it with this remark:
Because of Rosa's bad faith method of argumentation, I am forced to cut and paste a rather long explanation of this social process with quite a bit of preamble. She pretends to have never read it. I challenge her to tell me where I go wrong:
I have told MS several times precisely where he "goes wrong" -- my latest piece of advice to that effect coming from Exchange #10:
First: I have told MS where he goes wrong; like so many others, he went wrong the moment he imported incomprehensible jargon from Hegel and Traditional Thought into Marxism. I couldn't have been clearer.
Second, and once again: MS thinks he has explained himself, but he is locked in the aforementioned Hegelian circle from which he can't psychologically or logically escape.
Finally, as noted above, it is plain that since MS doesn't understand his own words, I stand no chance. How can I explain anything to him if none of it makes sense (except I repeat what I have said in point one above). And it is no good him telling me over and over again that he has used Marx's words, for reasons I outlined above, here and here.
MS now returns to an earlier theme, his alleged incapacity to explain how capitalism can have purposes:
The Impersonal Domination of Capital
Rosa:
"In a recent e-mail, MS asserted that capital has certain 'purposes'. And here we seen where importing anything from Hegel has landed us, we end up mystifying capital as if it were a human being!"
What's mystifying is the fact that someone who claims to have been a Marxist for over 30 years doesn't understand that Marx demonstrates capital has its own purposes irrespective of human needs. Indeed, human needs are subordinate to the needs of capital. It is truly mindboggling. Since Rosa does not discuss Capital, I do not know where she's coming from with statements like the one above. Does she think capitalists subjectively determine the structure of society by an act of their individual wills? Does she not understand capitalists are no less determined by the purposes of capital than wage labourers? Does she think the capitalist class exploits wage labour because they are bad people or greedy?
Certainly, capitalists can have purposes, but we have yet to have it explained how capitalism can have purposes (unless this is just a confusing example of metonymy, or perhaps even a metaphor of some sort -- but MS doesn't choose either of those easy escape routes). Once more, MS blames me for his inability to make himself understood.
In fact, he compounds the problem by saying this:
Marx demonstrates capital has its own purposes irrespective of human needs. Indeed, human needs are subordinate to the needs of capital.
So, capitalism now has "needs", too! Perhaps it also has hopes, desires and a fear of heights! And it is little use MS trying to tell us that Marx 'demonstrated' this (while failing to quote where he did so) since it is still unclear how something inanimate, like capitalism, is capable of forming, expressing, or even experiencing human aims and intentions. Maybe we can book it a few hours of therapy while we're at it.
Of course, this might be what is called a "dead metaphor", since we often say things like "Your car's engine needs some oil", or "Your garden needs watering", but these are just paraphrases of sentences like the following "You need to put oil in your car's engine", and "You need to water your garden." Are there any equivalent sentences MS could use?
Clearly, therefore, non-human entities can 'have needs' in the above sense. But, that in no way helps us understand how capitalism itself can have needs. Perhaps we could argue that in a very loose sense of "need", maybe in the "dead metaphor" sense of that word, each capitalist enterprise needs to make a profit, meaning that if it doesn't, it will go under. But, MS appears to mean more than this. If so, what? Maybe he just means that capitalists need to make a profit or they will go bust? I offer MS that simple solution (and it is one I myself accept and would have used), with no "dead metaphors" or mystical jargon anywhere in sight. It is instructive to see how a return to ordinary language, along the lines Marx advocated, has obviated the need to use such confusing language (no pun intended). Could the same strategy obviate the need to personalise capital, attributing it with 'purposes'? This might rescue MS, once more. Well, since this is a problem of his own making, I will leave this to him to wrestle with. I think I have helped him enough as it is.
In response to the following comment from MS in Exchange #10:
Capital is the personification of capital. Marx does not deal in persons in Capital. He deals in the logical categories that stand in for persons. This is 101 stuff, Rosa. The concept of capital has logical necessity. Its purposes are determined by its concept, which Marx describes self-valorizing value. Marx, not me. Marx...,
I added these words:
Second, what on earth does "The concept of capital has logical necessity. Its purposes are determined by its concept..." mean? Apparently, according to MS, capital is conscious after all, and can perhaps think for itself. I suspect we can all now see that the alleged rotation of Hegel through 180º, so that he supposedly stands "the right way up", was in fact through the full 360º. This is the mysticism that comrades like MS want to introduce into Marxism, since it is now a complete mystery how an economic system can have purposes or intentions, or even how a "concept" can "determine" anything. Instead of human beings, we have "concepts" running the show! Pure, unadulterated Idealist mysticism.
I trust the genuine materialists among us will be able to see the pernicious influence of Christian Mysticism, via Hegel, on MS's words, here.
MS continues:
Rosa claims not to accept Analytical Marxism, which is bourgeois Marxism or not Marxism at all. But from what I am forced to gather, Analytical Marxism would make sense of her incredulity about the determinative nature of economic forms. Analytical Marxists posit the individual as the theoretical subject of society. So it kind of makes sense that Rosa misunderstands Marx to be saying capital is a human being when he describes capital as a "subject" and a "self-moving substance." Her interpretation apparently lacks the notion of conceptual necessity. Marx is giving a conceptual reconstruction of the economic law of motion of capital in Capital. His critique is not from the perspective of subjective individuals, who he calls "character masks" of economic categories (i.e., capital and labour power).
This is ironic, since MS has himself clearly bought into a bourgeois individualist theory of knowledge (on that, see here and here).
Independently of the above, where have I said anything like the following?
So it kind of makes sense that Rosa misunderstands Marx to be saying capital is a human being when he describes capital as a "subject" and a "self-moving substance."
I have simply asked MS to explain his words (not Marx's), which clearly state that capitalism has purposes. These are MS's words, not mine. I have simply highlighted their mystical, Idealist implications.
But what about the next comment?
Her interpretation apparently lacks the notion of conceptual necessity.
First, what 'interpretation' is that then? Is this yet another attempt to put words in my mouth? I fear it is. And I'm the one with the 'bad faith'? I haven't told MS what my interpretation is, so how can he know what it does or doesn't 'lack'?
Second, I'd like to see MS explain 'conceptual necessity', another idea he has imported into Marxism from ruling-class Rationalism. Scott Meikle tried to explain it several years ago. I have batted that attempt out of the park, here.
Let's see if MS can do any better than Meikle.
There then follows a long section where MS goes off on yet another one of his "let's explain Marx to Rosa" rambles, about which I have little to say. Except for the obscure jargon MS feels compelled to inflict on his readers, I agree with much of what he argues, anyway!
Marx does investigate the consciousness of individuals at certain points in Capital, most explicitly the section on the Fetishism of Commodities and the Trinity Formula. In those sections, Marx demonstrates how social relations between people become objectified in material things (e.g., instruments of labour). Things, then, give the objective appearance of eternally existing in their socially determined state (i.e., as capital) to the individuals responsible for creating them. This is why, in the Grundrisse, Marx says we are "ruled by abstractions." Socially determined forms of organization, such as the immediate producers being wage labourers, become normalized. Wage labour appears to be labour pure and simple. Formal characteristics of the social structure (i.e., commodity-form, value-form, capital-form) determine the potential actions available to individual living in a society with such forms. If society reproduces itself over time, then its form and content become adequate to each other. Marx continually chided the classical political economists for neglecting the dialectic of form and content, and the impact it had on our understanding of social operations:
Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value [i.e., why does this content take the value form - MS]. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions. [Bold added.]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives it its special historical character. 33 [Bold added.]
This abstract determination, value, takes "mastery over man" when it becomes the subject and self-moving substance of a social process, that is, when money is used to make more money through a specific social form of (re)production. Marx calls this formally determined process the "General Form of Capital," the title of Chapter Four of Capital: M – C – M'.
Under the general formula of capital, valorization (M') becomes the imperative of production. This means that an individual capital that is able to turn an initial sum of value into more value with the most proficiency is structurally advantaged over other individual capitals. What's more, Marx demonstrated how this imperative is independent of the will of any individual capitalist on a personal level. In societies with a capitalist mode of production, all of life's necessities and luxuries (food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, etc.) are produced in the commodity-form. The use-value character of the commodity is obtained and actually consumed if and only if it is first realized in its characteristic as an exchange value. This means that life's necessities are mediated through monetary exchange because the direct producers do not own or control their own means of production or subsistence, which is necessary to reproduce themselves. They are forced to sell their only commodity -- labour power for a wage -- and purchase the product of their own labour, as a class, from the capitalist class who takes legal possession of the social product in the form of private property. Accordingly, monetary exchange overtakes the social provisioning process. Demand for capitalistically produced goods is divorced from human need and desire. Demand, as an economic determination, is different than need and desire. Demand is need and desire backed by money. Production based on monetary demand is structurally oriented to the abstract value character of the commodity, money being value's "necessary form of appearance," instead of the use value characteristic. Why? Because capitalist producers only "risk their capital" on the assumption that someone will be able to pay for the result of production with money.
No single person or collection of persons makes the conscious decision that production taking this social form. The economic abstraction or category of "capital" as "self-expanding-value" formally determines production. Human beings are the "character masks" of economic categories. If an actual flesh and blood capitalist does not act in accordance with the "character mask" of capital, then he pays the price. Put differently, if an individual capitalist wants to be a good guy and use all of his productive property to produce use-values that will be directly consumed without being exchanged for money, he will not be a capitalist for long. It literally does not matter what he wants. The economic form of capital has its own purposes; namely, the aim or end of valorization operates with iron necessity, if the capitalist mode of production prevails. Individuals who do not align themselves to capital’s purposes are disciplined by this "bewitched and distorted" social form, which has taken "mastery over man." That is, a capitalist will not be a capitalist for long if she does not produce for profit and wage labourers are forced to run into the arms of capitalists (for money) if they want to eat.
Does this mean Marx ended "up mystifying capital as if it were a human being!"? No. Economic forms do not have purpose in the same way humans have purposes. Just like heaven doesn't have the purpose of scaring souls into good behavior. But it appears to have this purpose to people. Just like the state does not have the purpose of harmonizing civil society. But it appears to have this purpose to people. These structures are alienated forms that appear to have their own purposes independent of the individuals constituting them. That is the point! All of these economic categories or abstractions that "rule over" Man are nothing more than the results of the labour of the working class in an alienated form.
However, MS failed to explain how capitalism can appear to have purposes to anyone other than an Idealist, or a mystic. Are all the "people" to whom he refers above Idealists? Or mystics? Perhaps they are. But, even more puzzling, how can an economic system even seem to have purposes? To anyone, let alone putative Idealists?
But, MS earlier said that capitalism actually has purposes, not just that some people think it has purposes. Now he says:
Economic forms do not have purpose in the same way humans have purposes. Just like heaven doesn't have the purpose of scaring souls into good behavior. But it appears to have this purpose to people. Just like the state does not have the purpose of harmonizing civil society. But it appears to have this purpose to people.
However, it isn't easy to harmonise the above with MS's comments expressed earlier:
Capital is the personification of capital. [?? -- RL.] Marx does not deal in persons in Capital. He deals in the logical categories that stand in for persons. [?? -- RL.] This is 101 stuff, Rosa. The concept of capital has logical necessity. [?? -- RL.] Its purposes are determined by its concept, [?? -- RL.] which Marx describes [as] self-valorizing value. Marx, not me. Marx....
Marx demonstrates capital has its own purposes irrespective of human needs.[?? -- RL.] Indeed, human needs are subordinate to the needs of capital.
Indeed, human needs are subordinate to the needs of capital. It is truly mindboggling. Since Rosa does not discuss Capital, I do not know where she's coming from with statements like the one above. Does she think capitalists subjectively determine the structure of society by an act of their individual wills? Does she not understand capitalists are no less determined by the purposes of capital than wage labourers? Does she think the capitalist class exploits wage labour because they are bad people or greedy?
Maybe it's the stiff-lipped Brit in ya..."Capital is fallacy" is flippant way of saying capital is false reality or totality. Again, I've gone into this before. Capital is a false totality because it requires wage labor and nature to reproduce itself, but it fails to absolutely subsume wage labor and nature to its own purposes. [Bold added in each case.]
None of the above look at all compatible with: "But [capitalism] appears to have this purpose to people."
For example: "Does she not understand capitalists are no less determined by the purposes of capital than wage labourers?" That can't be because capitalism simply "appears to people to have purposes" since, "Marx demonstrates capital has its own purposes irrespective of human needs" (emphasis added), and one presumes this also means "irrespective of human perception". Moreover, capitalism's "purposes are determined by its concept", not by how it appears to these unnamed "people". Furthermore, an appearance can't do the following: "Capital is a false totality because it requires wage labor and nature to reproduce itself, but it fails to absolutely subsume wage labor and nature to its own purposes." Here capitalism is said the have purposes that are independent of how it might appear to anyone.
So, it looks like capitalism has 'purposes' all of its own independently of how it might appear to "people". On the other hand, if it is still true that capitalism can't have purposes "in the same way humans have purposes", then we are still in the dark about what way it can have purposes. What other ways are there to have purposes that humans beings can't share in or can't have?
But even worse still, how can capital "determine" anything? Does it plan ahead, deliberate, mull things over and then act? But that is how human beings determine things. So, in what way does capital behave like a deliberating human being? Does it posses a sort of collective mind? Is it conscious? But all these things are suggested by a use of the word "determine"? And if that isn't the case with capitalism, why use this confusing word?
Of course, this entire topic introduces issues connected with the traditional, metaphysical theory, determinism -- which I also reject as incoherent non-sense. Since I have dealt with this topic more fully in Essay Thirteen Part Three (here and here), readers are directed there for more details.
MS also appealed to a couple of analogies to explain himself:
Economic forms do not have purpose in the same way humans have purposes. Just like heaven doesn't have the purpose of scaring souls into good behavior. But it appears to have this purpose to people.
And:
Just like the state does not have the purpose of harmonizing civil society. But it appears to have this purpose to people. Just like the state does not have the purpose of harmonizing civil society. But it appears to have this purpose to people.
But, neither analogy is applicable. As we have seen: according to MS capitalism actually has purposes and doesn't just appear to have them.
In which case, MS still owes us an explanation of just how capitalism can have 'purposes'. Once more: what other sense of "purpose" is there that human beings don't have which capitalism does?
So many questions, so few answers.
Finally, I have nowhere asserted that "Marx ended 'up mystifying capital as if it were a human being'"; I did assert this of MS, but not Marx.
Yet more 'bad faith' on MS's part.
Appendix A
Here is a copy of the document MS sent me (reformatted):
Let me clarify a few points about the nature of abstractions. For Marx, the term delineates a mental process undertaken by thinking subjects. He did not feel the need justify this procedure epistemologically or metaphysically by offering a theory of truth. Marx thought thoughts happened in that thinking box between the ears called "the mind."
In his own words:
"[T]he method of arising form the abstract to the concrete is the only way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind." (Grundrisse, pg. 101)
Tying this claim to failed philosophical attempts to justify "the mind" and, thereby, turning this into an epistemological, metaphysical, or linguistic debate over the nature of a "thinking box" called "the mind" is a cheap philosophical trick. Marx is not some grad school student defending a theory of truth. He is giving a critique of political economy. Thus, he simple takes it for granted that mental functions occur in our heads, instead of in our stomachs or hearts, and gets on with the business of critiquing. I sleep well at night with the same commonplace understanding of thoughts occurring "in the mind," even if I know (as Marx knew) that such a "place" cannot be given a proper philosophical defense. Thought reproduces the concrete "in the brain" expresses the same thing as thought reproduces the concrete "in the mind."
My point: Abstraction is a kind of thinking. Imagining is a kind of thinking. Planning is a kind of thinking. Remembering is a kind of thinking. All of these mental functions are similar. All are different modes of thinking appropriate to different forms of thoughts. Abstractions, in particular, are abstractions from the way the material world immediately presents itself to us as thinking beings. Neither Marx nor I are making a "dogmatic imposition" when we say that abstraction is the kind of thinking appropriate to the analysis of economic forms (Capital, pg. 90) and, then, proceed by abstracting. If I said planning is the kind of thinking appropriate to the analysis of grocery shopping, would you accuse me making the "dogmatic imposition" of planning, that is, if I hadn't already justified planning philosophically?
All of the talking past each other is a result this: I say X; you say I mean Y, which is tied to a philosophical tradition Z…when all I said was X.
Abstraction, as a mode of thinking, cannot be defended in the abstract. That is essentially what you are asking me to do in your responses. To abstract is to abstract from something. On the very first page of Capital, what does Marx abstract from? The capitalist mode of production as it appears. What does he abstract? He abstracts the commodity because, in societies with a capitalist mode of production, wealth appears as 'an immense collection of commodities.' How does he analyze the commodity as an economic form? By abstracting from the commodity as an object of consumption (i.e., from the fact that the commodity can 'satisfy a human need'). Why? Because consumption 'stands outside economics' (Grundrisse, pg. 89). Use-value qua object of consumption is not a determinative economic category necessary to explain the specific social form of production and exchange that Marx is rationally reconstructing in Capital. Thus, Marx abstracts consumption considerations away.
In the first couple pages of Capital, through abstraction, Marx has isolated the individual commodity as the elementary or cell-form of wealth in capitalist society. Moreover, through abstraction, Marx has disregarded the non-economic, use-value aspect of the commodity because it represents the transhistorical 'material content of wealth, whatever the social form may be.' Since Marx is analyzing a historical determined social form of wealth via a systematic dialectic of categories from the abstract to the concrete, he 'extinguishes' the material characteristics of the individual commodity and the material characteristics of the individual labor that produces it in order to analyze the commodity in its 'pure state' (use-value falls away at this level of abstraction, simple commodity circulation; use-value returns as economically significant category in Vol. 2 and 3, capital commodity circulation):
"If we make abstraction from its [a commodity’s] use-value, we abstract also from its material constituents and forms which makes it a use-value. It is no longer [a] useful thing…Nor is it any longer a product of [a particular form of] labor…" (Capital, pg. 128)
In the course of analysis, Marx demonstrates that it is not only "we" (or he) who make(s) abstraction from use-value. It is the social practice of generalized commodity production and exchange that abstracts from the useful characteristics labor (e.g., weaving) and the products of labor (e.g., linen), which gives them the value-form. This social abstraction is a necessary moment in the systematic logic of capital. That is, the value character of the commodity emerges from the social process of exchange where private labor (use-value producing labor) validates itself as social labor (value producing labor). This process of 'extinguishing' or abstracting the use-value character of commodities and comparing them as values is not a function an individual mind (Marx's), no less than value-producing labor is the function an individual factory. Rather, it is a social process (abstraction) that necessarily occurs in reality before it can be rationally reproduced in the mind (abstraction), since a rational reconstruction is a reconstruction of an already appropriated organic whole. In other words, a rational reconstruction is an attempt to bring intelligibility to the 'chaotic conceptions' of the everyday consciousness that appear in mystified form. Hence, the same social process that abstracts the use-value character of the commodity empirically presents itself to the everyday consciousness as nothing but the exchange of use-values with price tags. Everyday consciousness requires demystification. The mental act of distancing himself (abstracting) from the mystifying reality of capitalist society in thought – moving from the simple abstract to the complex concrete – allowed Marx to demystify capitalist society by systematically reconstructing it into an intelligible totality.
What else is he doing here if he is not abstracting? What is your position? Marx thought he was abstracting but he actually wasn't? When Marx explicitly says he is abstracting what is he doing? Making an error? A dogmatic imposition? You never engage or offer an alternative explanation of what Marx is doing when he says he is abstracting, or not that I am aware of. Your common noun criticism misses the mark as a critique of systematic dialectic. It simply does not apply.
So when you link to philosophical arguments about epistemology and language, I follow them. But I don't play those word games. I've read Parmenides and Philosophical Investigations and damn near everything in between. Trust me, I'd [love] to forget them (and thankfully I largely have). For the most part, they do not advance my understanding of the critique of political economy. Hegel does. Hence my willingness to engage with Hegel's thought. I don't do it because it's enjoyable.
Moving on.
Abstraction as a mode of thinking is not the only sense of abstraction that Marx makes use of in his critique of political economy. Economic categories are abstractions. The misapplication or misconceptualization of economic categories is typically what makes them "go bad" (e.g., as empty, forced, or one-sided). Abstraction, in this sense, is a thought-object instead of thinking, a noun instead of a verb. Marx thought classical and vulgar political economy were riddled with bad abstractions. Even the 'best representatives' fall short. Smith's muddled and Ricardo's clear labor theories of value are prime examples. Their conceptions of labor are transhistorical (i.e., Smith sees labor as sacrifice and Ricardo sees labor as invariable source of value in terms of being the defining characteristics of labor as such). Both pay insufficient attention to the historically determined social form of production and exchange that provides the necessary conditions for value to emerge as a social reality. In Marx's words, they "treat this mode of production [determinate abstraction – MS] as one eternally fixed by Nature for every state of society [general abstraction – MS]" (Capital, footnote 33).
The last, and most interesting, use of abstraction by Marx is abstraction as "objective illusion." An objective illusion is a commonly shared misapprehension of reality. For instance, when workers see the products of their own labor as the productive power of capital they are under the spell of an objective illusion because this is how the social relations of production within capitalist society manifest themselves to the everyday consciousness, i.e., through capital as a "thing" lording over workers and controlling the production process. And it is in this sense that individuals in capitalist societies are "ruled by abstractions" (Grundrisse, pg. 164).
This understanding of abstraction is also related to the objective formation of a real abstraction that happens 'behind the backs' of individuals in the exchange process. That is, in exchange, individual concrete private labor is reduced to universal abstract social labor. This is an objective process, a real abstraction (i.e., a social practice of reduction), which occurs in capitalist societies. It necessarily happens because universal abstract labor (value) has no immediacy. It is 'purely social' and 'contains not an atom of matter.' It belies immediate empirical observation. Value must be reflected, 'come into a value-relation.' Money, as the universal general equivalent, is the mirror in which value becomes known; that is, money socially validates individual concrete labor as universal abstract labor through monetary exchange. This creates the illusion that money as such, a thing, is value as such. In reality, money is the phenomenal form of a social relation. When we purchase commodities with money, we are reproducing the social relation of capital and wage labor, i.e., we are realizing the surplus value (or more accurately, the profit) of commodities. This allows capital to return to production in order to valorize value again through unpaid wage labor. None of this is apparent when we purchase, say, a bottle of wine. It is a process that goes on 'behind our backs.' Nevertheless, we are the ones who reproduce these abstractions (economic forms) that rule over us (value, money, capital, wage labour, etc.) simply be going about our daily lives. "Value," Marx tells us, "does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather turns every product of labour into a social hieroglyph" (Capital, pg. 167).
This is why Marx's critique of political economy is a social critique, not a continuation of classical political economy. He is demonstrating how social relations between people become inverted and take the "fantastic form of a relation between things" (Capital, pg. 165). If a class of immediate producers is separated from their own means of labor and subsistence, which is owned and controlled by a class of non-producers, who use them to extract surplus labor, then wealth takes the economic form of value, i.e., the commodity-form, money-form, and capital-form. From this historically determined social formation there emerges a 'dull compulsion of economic relations.' Actions become form-determined by the abstract economic categories continually being reproduced, regardless of the will of the economic actors involved. Profit, for instance, is a consequence of the economic form (or form-determined), not the greed of the capitalist. Slaves were not compelled by impersonal abstract categories (i.e., the product of their own labor in alienated form). Slaves were compelled by the lash.
I bring up this last point to demonstrate how far afield your criticisms are from what I am (i.e., what Marx is) claiming. There's no direct appeal to the language of bourgeois philosophy in what I've said (other than Marx's use [of] Hegel to explain money). You have to drag what I am (i.e., what Marx is) saying through the muck of 2400 years of philosophy in order to criticize it as…I'm still not sure…what? A category mistake (e.g., thinking thinking occurs in the mind). A confusion (e.g., abstraction as thought-object is nothing more than common noun). Impossible (e.g., abstraction as a mode of thinking is not an actual cognitive function).
Neither the mental process of abstracting (thinking) nor abstractions (thought-objects) nor social processes (real abstractions) entail philosophical theories of about the Nature of Nature or the Nature of Society or the Nature of Being or the Nature of Truth. You are the one slapping on the philosopher's hat. Of course, it is possible for thinking and thought, abstract(ion) or not, to be attacked or justified philosophically. But, again, Marx wasn't saying, "Here is my theory of truth." He was saying, "Here is my critique of political economy." The claims he (and I) make(s) are about nothing more than a very specific, historically determined social form of production an exchange where social relations between people take on alienated, abstract forms that present themselves to the economic actors involved in producing them as "things." This is a 'perverted', 'distorted', 'bewitched', 'mystified', 'fetishized', 'inverted' world dominated by the commodity-form, which is full of 'metaphysical subtleties' and 'theological niceties' (all Marx's words). Using philosophical tools, even ones genetically tied to bourgeois forms of thought, to crack this nut is permissible. Since you are a Marxist (i.e., someone who understands social being forms consciousness), you should know bourgeois forms of thought are unavoidable. Marx was not thinking above bourgeois thought-forms. He was "thinking out of them" (Adorno's words).
It's difficult to glean your interpretation of Marx. You seem to be coming from analytic Marxism, which really isn't Marxist at all (at least in its understanding of Marx). I mean that sincerely, not as a cheap shot. You also show some sympathy for the Althusser in our discussion. From my perspective, Althusser is part of the traditional or worldview Marxism that attributes transhistorical economic laws to reality, which, in his reading, are overdetermined by the particular social production relations within capitalist society. That is, his assumptions are closer to dialectical materialism than mine, insofar as I do not interpret Marx's critique of political economy to be positing any transhistorical laws whatsoever.
See https://qr.ae/pNrGGm (also a potential reassessment of the Postscript?)
Werner Bonefeld sums up my perspective rather nicely:
For the critique of political economy, economic nature is not the essence of economics. The essence of economics is society, and society is the social individual in her social relations. The circumstances that Man in her social relations appears as the personification of economic things – a bearer of economic laws –focuses the critique of political economy as a negative theory of society. In capitalism, Marx argues, the individuals are governed by the product of their own hands and what appears thus as economic nature is in fact a socially constituted nature that belongs to definite social relations. Social reality is this 'objective appearance': the social individual vanishes in her social world only to reappear in her price tag, by which she is governed. Yet this inversion of the social subject into the economic object is her own work. It does not derive from some abstract economic matter that objectifies itself in the acting subject, as if by a force of nature. For the critique of political economy the critical issue is thus not the discovery of general economic laws of history. Rather, its object of critique is the existent society, in which definite social relations subsist in the form of abstract economic forces, things endowed with an invisible will that 'asserts itself as a regulative law of nature' (Capital, pg. 168). ['Critical Theory and the Critique of Political Economy: On Subversion and Negative Reason', pg. 27.]
This is from one of MS's Quora answers which he also e-mailed me (reformatted and spelling adjusted to UK English):
Do capitalist economists accept the existence of surplus value or not?
Explicitly, no. They take the phenomenal forms of surplus value as the sum and substance of profits.
According to Marx, profit is the form of appearance of surplus-value within capitalist societies. The content or substance of surplus-value is not directly observable. It necessarily appears as one of its forms (profit of enterprise, interest, rent).
For an industrial, financial, or landowning capitalist, the purpose of production, lending money, and landownership is to turn money (or an asset) into more money. It would not only be strange but also impossible for surplus-value to appear in any other way than in one of its apparent forms to the economic agents involved. Thus Marx does not think people are deluded or dumb for not seeing profit as what it really is, the unpaid labor of the working class. Capitalism is a fetishising and mystifying system. Its reality is illusory or illusion-producing. 'Things' (objects) take power over human beings (subjects).
Bourgeois economists, however, are supposed to explain this reality. Well, they are supposed to in theory. We all know that is not what bourgeois economists do:
"In France and in England the bourgeoisie had conquered political power (ca. 1830s). Thenceforth, the class struggle, practically as well as theoretically, took on more and more outspoken and threatening forms. It sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy. It was thenceforth no longer a question, whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not. In place of disinterested inquirers, there were hired prize fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and the evil intent of apologetic."
Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I
The purpose of bourgeois economics is to defend the appearances, justify them, naturalize them, make them beyond criticism, etc. As Marx points out, bad conscience has a lot to do with it. This is truer today than it was in his time. Bad conscience has been institutionalized. It is a part of the conditioning process at the intellectual robot factories we call universities. Thought takes place within a clearly defined cognitive map.
When being a proponent of modern monetary theory makes an economist a "radical," you know the "bourgeois horizon" has receded to the lowest of levels. Needless to say, there's not a lot of questioning or criticism of the capitalist system going on in Economics Departments.
The reason why neither capitalists nor their apologists, bourgeois economists, understand profit as the form of appearance of surplus-value is the "bewitched and distorted" form of social production in capitalists societies. A specific, historically determined mode of production and its attendant social relations become internalized, then naturalized, and thereby obscured, even without the evil intent of apologetics.
Social relations -- capitalists exploiting wage labourers -- appear in the guise of material things -- means of production, owned by capitalists, used to create commodities along with wage labor. Thus "things" take the place of social relations in the minds of the economic agents and come to dominate social interaction, the "commodification" of life. Instead of the provisioning process (i.e., social reproduction) being viewed through the lens of the social form that historically determines productive activity, the social forms (i.e., commodity, wage labor, money, capital) invert themselves in the consciousness of the economic agents involved. Capital is not understood to be a social relation where one class monopolizes the means of production. Capital is nothing more than the means of production materially construed (i.e., things). Since the means of production are a necessary condition of any provisioning process, they are "natural" and "eternal" aspects of social reproduction. Since capital is nothing more than the means of production, it, too, is "natural" and "eternal," at least according to the inverted "logic" of the bourgeois economist!
Under the influence of this mystifying system, material things take on occult properties. Means of production come into the world with birthrights, profit of enterprise. Land "stands on its hind legs" and demands payment, rent. Money becomes a goose that lays golden eggs, interest. Labor qua labor creates its own fair share, a wage.
Marx called this phenomenon the "Trinity Formula," capital-profit (interest), land-rent, labor-wage. In capitalist societies, the total social product created by the working class gets divvied up into revenues or monetary forms: (1) profit of enterprise and interest for capitalists, (2) rent for landowners, (3) wages for the working class. These forms of revenue invert themselves and become the origins (instead of the divided results) of the total social product created by the labor of the working class. Thus, capital magically "contributes" to production and deserves profits and interest. Land "contributes" to production and deserves rent. Labor contributes to production and deserves a wage. Since capital, land, and labor are necessary -- natural and eternal -- conditions of social reproduction, all three deserve their proper recompense according to their respective contributions. What’s more, the three necessary "factors of production" fit together without social friction. Yes, you heard me, there’s actual no social antagonisms in capitalist society (and no possibility of crises; see Greenspan's reaction to the last one). There is a natural and eternal "harmony of interests" between the factors….even knowing how and why people believe this bourgeois bullshit...I still don’t know how and why anyone could actually believe it!
So, what's really going on here?
As Marx wrote to his friend Kugelmann:
"Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance , is self-evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labor asserts itself, in the state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products."
Once inside a specific, historically determined social form of production the perception of justice is relative to the juridical norms of the given form:
"The justice of the transactions between agents of production rests on the fact that these arise as natural consequences out of the production relationships. The juristic forms in which these economic transactions appear as wilful acts of the parties concerned, as expressions of their common will and as contracts that may be enforced by law against some individual party, cannot, being mere forms, determine this content. They merely express it. This content is just whenever it corresponds, is appropriate, to the mode of production. It is unjust whenever it contradicts that mode. Slavery on the basis of capitalist production is unjust; likewise fraud in the quality of commodities."
In other words, capitalists receive profits as owners of the means of production because of the mode of production that currently prevails. If capitalists did not receive profits, then it would appear "unjust." That claim might seem a bit odd coming from an anti-capitalist, but only if we transport our thinking to a hypothetical social arrangement with a different social form arising from a different mode of production. If we remain within the confines of an actually existing capitalist system, then capitalists (owners of the means of production) receiving profits not only appears "just" but necessary to prevent production from grinding to a halt. The system could not reproduce itself without capitalist receiving profits, again, if the capitalist mode of production is taken as given. [The point of a critique is not to point our fingers as say "bad" or "unjust." That doesn't get us anywhere. Ideological forms necessarily coincide with their content. We have to critique the material conditions underlying and producing the ideological forms. Hence Marx did not couch his critique of capitalism in terms of justice, but in terms of the contradictory social form of material production that creates the illusion of "Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham" within capitalist society.]
The ideological forms, superstructures such as bourgeois justice, emerge from the mode of production, the material base. Thus it is no accident that commutative justice, resting on the abstraction of equality, comes to dominate in a society with the commodity-form of production predicated on the equal exchange of privately produced material goods at its base. The correspondence of the material base and ideological superstructure dialectally reinforce one another, justify each other's existence, as it were.
Consequently, it is difficult to escape this trap or find a proper footing for criticism. Everyone always already has the default consciousness of the ruling class. And such forms of thought perpetuate themselves seamlessly. That is, the ideological assumptions of the prevailing system do not have to be learned through any intentional or conscious effort. They are simply absorbed during the socialization process. Nobody has to take a course on economics and be explicitly told, "profits are the just reward for risking capital." People just "come to know" this by living in a society with a capitalist mode of production as its material base. If someone encounters a rational ordering of their unreflective assumptions by attending a course on bourgeois economics at university, then all of their seemingly inborn prejudices are conveniently confirmed.
Here is another Quora answer MS sent me (reformatted and spelling adjusted to UK English, again):
What is reification in Marxist philosophy?
Reification is a phenomenon that occurs in market societies as the result of commodity production, alienated labour, and abstract value. It literally means "thing-a-fication" or "to make into a thing."
In a market society, value appears to be an objective quality of commodities, a concrete thing intrinsic to commodities themselves. In reality, value is the result of capitalist social production relations.
Marx describes (abstract) labour as the "substance of value" in Capital Vol. 1. Concrete labour, physiological labour, irregardless of time and place, is the necessary condition for value-producing-labour. But for labour to actually become value-producing-labour it must also take on a specific social form. In ancient societies, labour took on the social form of masters appropriating and controlling the labour of slaves. In feudal societies, labour took on the social form of lords appropriating and controlling the labour of serfs. The social form of labour in (abstract) value-creating societies is the capital-wage labour social relation.
Labour becomes abstract value in commodity producing societies, with capital-wage labour social relations, because production and consumption are mediated through market exchange.
Production takes place under a capitalist mode of production for the purpose of exchange or, more specifically, for profit from exchange. Commodities are not produced for their utility. A capitalist does not produce cars so he can drive them all. He produces them in order to sell them on the market for a profit. He accomplishes this by purchasing two types of commodities: labour-power and means of production.
Labour-power is the capacity for labourers to do work. In a capitalist commodity society, workers must sell their labour-power to capitalists. They do not possess the means to produce enough goods for themselves to stay alive without contracting themselves out to another person's control. If workers owned the means to reproduce themselves, they could collectively decide what they wanted/needed to produce, how much to produced, and how to distribute the goods they produced. These tasks, in a capitalist commodity society, are the perquisite of the capitalist class and the impersonal, anarchic market.
The means of production are buildings, machines, tools, computers, raw materials, trade knowledge, etc., etc. that are necessary for the reproduction of society. Capitalists own them in commodity societies. They have the privilege of deciding what is done with them. But they are, at the same time, disciplined by the market. Capitalists do not make production decision in a vacuum. The importance of this, in terms of reification, can be seen most clearly through a thought experiment. Abstract away all other commodity producers. Imagine a single capitalist controlling the what and how of her private enterprise, say, a t-shirt factory. Under these prescribed conditions, she is the only commodity producer. Nobody else is producing pants or even food. What is her commodity worth? Obviously nothing. T-shirts would be worthless, literally valueless, without other commodities being produced by other commodity producers. The value of private labour is value-producing labour only when it confronts other private labour on the market.
So it is only when our t-shirt producer confronts other t-shirt producers on the market that she will learn the value of "her" specific commodity (it is "her" commodity in the sense that she, being a capitalist, contractually controls the labour-power and product of hundreds of workers). If she produced her t-shirts inefficiently or the wrong style for the season compared to other t-shirt producers, the value of her enterprise's private labour is less than the value of other t-shirt producers' private labour. Simply put, the market determines the value of private labour in commodity societies by conditioning the sphere of production. If her t-shirts are not selling on the market, she will have to make changes in her method of production, if she is to remain a capitalist and not go out of business. Thus the market conditions these production decisions.
What does all of this have to do with reification?
Let's look at "all of this" from the perspective of an individual worker. Staying with the t-shirt thought experiment, our worker is a seamstress. She spends her entire working day sewing the left-arm pit of t-shirts. When she shows up to work the thread is not hers, the sowing machine is not hers, the chair she sits on is not hers. Such things are "capital." They belong to the capitalist. Even she belongs to the capitalist during her contracted hours. By contracting her labor-power to the owner of the means of production, the capitalist, she relinquishes all rights to the product of her labor-power. All she does is sew armpits for a wage. She is -- seemingly no different than a piece of thread, sewing machine, or chair -- a mere component of capital.
Let's look at "all of this" from the perspective of the working class. The working class collectively produces all of the goods necessary for society to reproduce itself. When a capitalist, say, our t-shirt producer, brings "her" commodity to the market, she actually brings the product of thousands of workers (cotton growers, fertilizer producers, tractor manufacturers, seamstresses, transporters, among countless others). It is not "capital" that makes t-shirts. Workers make t-shirts. But under the condition of capital-wage labor social relations, this transparently obvious fact becomes mystified.
The chair the seamstress sits on to sew is objectified labor, someone's else labor-power that has been made-into-an-object. So too with every other so-called component of capital, the cotton, thread, sewing machine, building, etc. Because of capitalist social relations "all of this" gets mediated through private property laws and the market. Capital owns chairs. Chairs "come from" the market. Capital owns the sewing machines. The sewing machines "come from" the market. Etc., Etc. Even labour-power appears to "come from" the market, the labour market. The power of the working class is divested to the "things" of the market, commodities, because alienated labour confronts the product of its own labour on the market, which has previously determined (i.e., conditioned) the labour process via the capitalist's search for abstract value.
Reification is the distortion of the power of the working class into the power of commodities (things) in a capitalist society.
Here follows the text of MS's latest 'reply' to me -- re-formatted and slightly edited; I have corrected a few typos. I have replied to it above.
I have removed a long passage from the middle of this 'reply' and posted it to Appendix E, since it turns out to be irrelevant to the discussion (as readers will be able to determine for themselves by reading it.
This will probably be my last response to Rosa. If she is willing to engage in a textual analysis of any of the three volumes of Capital, the three parts of Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse, or A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, then I will continue this "debate." Her pick. Short of such an engagement, I'm done wasting my time after this response. I like Rosa. But she is a crusader who has lost her way, a Revolutionary Errant, Donna Quixote, if you will. Rosa tilts at windmills of her own making. Slaying would-be dialectical materialists (something I am not) with hyperlinks, quotations, paralogisms, and the practice of bad faith forgetfulness of everything her interlocutors have said in the past. Of course, in reality, like Don, Donna Quixote's slaying of her opponents turns out to be nothing more than delusions of grandeur in her own solipsistic head. What she fails to realize is that if, and it is an incredibly big if, her arguments had purchase, she would not be a Marxist and Marxism would be foolishness of the highest order. Thankfully, her windmill turns out to be a mirror of herself. She slashes her own legs out from underneath herself without even realizing what she is doing. It took me some time to realize this about Donna Quixote. She is familiar with the history of Marxism, as a political movement. This led me to believe she was familiar with Marx's critique of political economy. But, as with so many Marxists, she has failed to do that one crucial thing: read Marx. Any literate person can quote Marx, opponents included. Understanding Marx requires constant engagement with his texts. On this site, in private email, and on other platforms Donna Quixote offers not a single insight into Marx's critique of political economy. Donna Quixote simply does not have the background knowledge of Marx's critique to argue with people who study Marx seriously, so she constantly takes the fight elsewhere. Unfortunately, this leads her to say incredible naïve things about Marx, things that are wildly confusing, especially to someone like me. I came to the table with a good faith assumption she was conversant with Marx's work. Perhaps I'm a slow learner or just too nice, but after repetitive pleas with her to engage Marx's texts and a slurry of odd comments made by her in our discussions, I realized the nature of the problem: she has no explanation of Marx: Donna Quixote tilts at windmills.
In what follows, I respond in the opposite manner of Rosa, that is, in a rational and coherent format. Rosa likes to muddy the water as much as possible to distract people from the fact that she has literally nothing to say about Marx. Links, long quotations by others, and incredibly cumbersome quote chopping make for a dizzying maelstrom of confusion. The last technique -- arbitrarily taking single quotes as self-standing assertions -- allows her to charge "dogmatism" and "prove it," when the contested claim has already been proven elsewhere. This causes frustration in her opponents. And, voila, the Revolutionary Errant deems her opponents’ frustration proof of her own victory. Windmill defeated.
I will address three issues: some final thoughts on the nature of abstractions; the social process of reducing concrete labour to abstract labour; the impersonal domination of capital.
The Nature of Abstractions
Rosa thinks she has soundly disproven the possibility of abstractions long ago. This causes her to work within a closed system of thought that filters any new information through her faulty understanding, thereby distorting even the simplest of explanations. Abstractions are magical, mysterious, and metaphysical impossibilities to Rosa. It does not matter what someone means by abstraction. She clearly doesn't understand what Marx means by abstraction. She just knows abstraction = bad. It's part of her crusade to attack them, for reasons I'll get to shortly. Unfortunately, her ignorance places her in a similar position to our hominid ancestors and their reactions to lightning. All the hominids knew was lightning = bad. If a regular person from the 21st century came and explained lighting to a hominid, her reaction would be similar to Rosa's reaction to abstractions, namely a simple explanation would sound like "gooblygook" [sic] and fancy "jargon." Instead of learning about lightning or abstractions, the hominid and Rosa treat their respective mysteries as, well, mysteries. If anyone tries to explain the "mysteries" to her, he or she is met with closed-minded incredulity. The unexplainable can't be explained. Anyone who tries to do so is confused, or so Rosa thinks.
This is how Rosa reasons. Someone says they combined numbers in their head through the mental process of "addition." Rosa says "where did mysterious mental process take place?" The person says, "Uhh, in my head." Rosa says "Impossible!" "Show me where in your head?" The person, say "Do what?" Rosa says, "Metaphysical imposter!" The person says, "Here, I’ll just right it down on paper." So the person writes down "2 + 2 = 4" Rosa says, "STOP!" "We can’t talk about that because it is proof." Rosa continues, "Now, explain to me this mental process of so- called addition?" The person tells Rosa to go f*ck herself. Rosa claims victory.
This is not hyperbole. It is exactly what Rosa does in debate. In her last response, she rattles off quotes from Marx from her site, a partial list of the hundreds of times Marx talks about abstraction, and her commentary on it is as follows:
"In fact, Marx doesn't actually do what he says he does [i.e., abstract-MS] in the above passages; he merely gestures at it, and his gestures are about as substantive as the hand movements of stage magicians."
In fact, Marx actually does do what he says he does in the above passages. But, here's the kicker, not in those passages. Marx was describing abstraction in various ways. To know if his supposed "gesture" is actually substantive, Rosa would have to do something that terrifies her: explain what Marx is doing in Capital. If the apparently foolish Marx isn't being a fool when he claims abstracting is possible, then he is doing something other than abstracting (e.g., something other than analyzing X aspect of an object by provisionally making conceptual reductions for the purpose of analysis). Rosa needs to demonstrate what Marx is actually doing, if he is not abstracting as he says he claims. Here’s her explanation:
"What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity."
That's it. That's all we get. Just as the perplexed person in the "so-called addition" example above was not allowed to demonstrate the mysterious process of addition, Marx is not allowed to demonstrate abstractions. That, again, would require working through Capital.
Rosa continues (stitched together with the previous quote):
"What Marx actually achieved was putting familiar words to use in new ways, thus establishing new concepts that enabled him to understand and explain Capitalism with startling depth and clarity. Anyone who reads the above passage can actually see him doing this. They don't need to do a brain scan on Marx (even if he were still alive!), nor apply psychometric tests to follow his argument -- or, indeed, re-create these alleged 'abstractions', which they would have to do if the 'process of abstraction'; were something we all do privately in our heads."
See him doing what, exactly? What concepts? Abstract labour? I'd pay money for Rosa to explain this new concept by way "putting familiar words to use in new ways." But that would require textual analysis. That is, something Rose does not do.
Abstracting is no more or less "privately in our heads" than adding or subtracting or reading or thinking about anything as individual subjects. Why does Rosa make it into some metaphysical solipsistic impossibility? I literally have no clue after pouring over her site for hours. Actually, I think I might know why or I'm forced to infer why. Abstractions are her lightning. Instead of treating them like any other form of thinking, Rosa "metaphysicalizes" abstractions into something radically different than any other commonplace way of thinking. Then she projects her own "metaphysicalist" interpretation onto anyone who says they are abstracting. By definition, now, whoever claims they are abstracting, for example, the use-value characteristic of commodity away in order to examine the commodity in its economic form as an exchange-value, is claiming to do what is impossible. This is precisely the abstraction Marx makes at the beginning of Capital. And, in the current context, this is precisely what Marx means by abstraction: one-sidedly focusing on a particular aspect of an object that does not actually exist in the one-sided manner in which it is being investigated.
Rosa, apparently, doesn't know this because she confuses Marx's criticism of bad abstractions as proof that Marx was against abstracting at one point in his life but somehow he forgot he was against it and mistakenly became a proponent of abstracting again. Oh, the webs we weave when we do not understand something! Treating what has been abstracted as if it existed in its one-sidedly abstracted state is what Marx was against. For example, he criticized Ricardo for doing just that with exchange-value, i.e., completely forgetting the use-value characteristic of the commodity in his analysis and treating commodities as if they were nothing but exchange-values.
The most egregious example of bad abstractors is the Young Hegelians. Most of Marx's ire in his early works is directed towards them. I think this is why Rosa associates all abstraction with "mythical" thinking. Marx heavily criticized Bauer and Co. for such poor thinking. In an earlier discussion, I brought up this quote from The Holy Family:
"If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit', if I go further and imagine that my abstract idea 'Fruit', derived from real fruit, is an entity existing outside me, is indeed the true essence of the pear, the apple, etc., then -- in the language of speculative philosophy –- I am declaring that 'Fruit' is the 'Substance' of the pear, the apple, the almond, etc. I am saying, therefore, that to be an apple is not essential to the apple; that what is essential to these things is not their real existence, perceptible to the senses, but the essence that I have abstracted from them and then foisted on them, the essence of my idea -– 'Fruit'. I therefore declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of 'Fruit'. My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant. It sees in the apple the same as in the pear, and in the pear the same as in the almond, namely 'Fruit'. Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is 'the substance' -- 'Fruit'."
The absurdity of comparing this way of abstracting, reifying universals, to Marx's way of abstracting the economically important aspect of a commodity, as the bearer of value, should be glaringly apparent. For some reason, Rosa turns Marx's method of abstraction into an a priori equivalent of the Young Hegelian's method of abstraction. She doesn't think textual analysis of Capital is necessary to disprove Marx. She indiscriminately asserts abstraction = bad. No wonder Donna Quixote is on a crusade! Thankfully, Marx isn't doing this "mythical" process. Rosa smuggles it in and associates it with every conceivable act of abstraction in order to disprove the possibility of Marx abstracting, even if Marx believed and explicitly claimed he used "the power of abstraction." Thus, no matter what you say to her, Rosa will claim you are doing this Young Hegelian parlour trick and call you insulting names for good measure.
Marx never forgot he was against abstractions. He literally explains the difference between Hegelian (the one used in "the Fruit" passage) and his own method here:
“The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel* fell into the illusion of conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the mind.”
*The extent to which Hegel actually did this, as opposed to Hegel’s epigones, is debatable (see Tony Smith's The Logic of Marx’s Capital)
What Rosa probably doesn't know: the mystifications of the value-form of production apparently replicated this absolute idealist inversion in the universal equivalent form of exchange. From the 1st German Edition:
"It is as if alongside and external to lions, tigers, rabbits, and all other actual animals, which form when grouped together the various kinds, species, subspecies, families etc. of the animal kingdom, there existed also in addition the animal, the individual incarnation of the entire animal kingdom. Such a particular which contains within itself all really present species of the same entity is a universal (like animal, god, etc.)."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
If Rosa wants to have this passage explained, she will have to engage the text with me. Her vulgar, crass materialist, crude empiricist, and reductionist interpretation lacks the conceptual framework to understand passages such as this one. I'm sure she will deny all of those descriptions. They are educated conjectures on my part, and necessarily conjectural because Rosa does not discuss Capital. It would turn Donna Quixote's Windmill into an actual Knight and she does not want that. Trust me.
Part of the frustration with debating Rosa stems from comments such as these:
Rosa:
"What I have argued is that instead of bothering with these obscure 'mental objects' (these mysterious 'abstractions' supposedly locked away in a socially-atomised brain), we should concentrate on the use of ordinary common nouns, employed in an open, public, and checkable arena."
Capital is the arena where Marx's abstractions are in open air. He abstracts in process of rationally reconstructing the capitalist mode of production. She will not step into the arena with me.
I could go on forever with these bad faith or ignorant statements (ignorant as in lack of knowledge of Marx, not stupid):
Rosa:
"So, their socialisation in the teachings of religion, or even Traditional Philosophy, before they became Marxists, pre-disposes these comrades to look for hidden 'essences', or a secret world lying behind 'appearances', since their early socialisation in bourgeois society taught them that that is what genuine philosophy is all about."
If old Rosa Freud actually read Marx she'd know he demystified reality using those terms:
"The finished configuration of economic relations, as these are visible on the surface, in their actual existence, and therefore also in the notions with which the bearers and agents of those relations seek to gain an understanding of them is very different from the configuration of their inner core, which is essential but concealed, and the concept corresponding to it." (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, pg. 311)
Value is an essential but concealed feature of the commodity-form. As I have explained to Rosa multiple times, this "value essence" that is concealed necessarily appears in the form of money, i.e., as something other than itself. Marx is following Hegel here. A value "essence" isn't "in a secret world lying behind 'appearances'". It has no reality except in its appearance. However, taking the appearances to be exhaustive of reality is a mistake (see TSV Part 3 on S. Bailey).
All of these ad hominem arguments by Rosa are confused, to say the least. Reading Marx is, dare I say, essential to correct them.
The Social Reduction of Private Concrete Labour to Universal Abstract Labour (value) or Real Abstraction
I have mentioned this social process multiple times to Rosa and sent her links to a Quora answer of mine that I know for a fact she had already read, but she still, in her bad faith manner of arguing, pretends I pulled this notion out of thin air without justification. The first time she showed incredulity towards this claim I was a bit nonplussed. I thought to myself, "Can this person who claims to be a Marxist for over 30 years really not have not read Marx all this time?" She pulls quotes from Marx's works on her site. Surely she's read his works, right? I suspect she's read Capital once a long time ago and forgotten everything about it. Capital is not the kind [of] text you can casually consume. It takes effort and a bit of humility, something our Revolutionary Errant is in short supply of.
From Rosa's last response:
"If 'abstraction' takes place 'in the mind' (and if we ignore all the sceptical implications and confusions that that idea brings in its train, partially outlined earlier) one might well wonder how a social practice can do this 'in the mind', too, and not outside the mind, which it will have to do if it is to have any effect on commodity production and exchange. Is society conscious. In a recent e-mail, MS asserted that capital has certain "purposes". And here we seen where importing anything from Hegel has landed us, we end up mystifying capital as if it were a human being!"
As she knows, because I have explained to her multiple times, the term abstraction is multivalent for Marx, as are most of the terms Marx used (e.g., value, money, capital, etc.). Her crude empiricism and reductionist method of interpretation cannot fathom such a use of terms. Rosa's close-minded system of thought apparently requires univalent definitions of common usage. If abstracting is a mental process, then it is always, everywhere, and for all times nothing but a mental process for her. It is literally impossible to understand Capital if you think this way. Is there any wonder why she never says anything about Capital?
Marx:
This reduction appears to be an abstraction, but it is an abstraction which is made every day in the social process of production [in a "latent" state, Marx's word -- MS]. The conversion of all commodities into labour-time is no greater an abstraction, and is no less real, than the resolution of all organic bodies into air.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01.htm
Marx:
So just what a value is does not stand written on its forehead. In order to relate their products to one another as commodities, men are compelled to equate their various labours to abstract human labour. They do not know it, but they do it, by reducing the material thing to the abstraction, value. This is a primordial and hence unconsciously instinctive operation of their brain, which necessarily grows out of the particular manner of their material production and the relationships into which this production sets them.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/commodity.htm
Marx:
As a general rule, articles of utility become commodities, only because they are products of the labour of private individuals or groups of individuals who carry on their work independently of each other. The sum total of the labour of all these private individuals forms the aggregate labour of society. Since the producers do not come into social contact with each other until they exchange their products, the specific social character of each producer’s labour does not show itself except in the act of exchange. In other words, the labour of the individual asserts itself as a part of the labour of society, only by means of the relations which the act of exchange establishes directly between the products, and indirectly, through them, between the producers.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4
This is a mystery to Rosa; therefore, it as a mystery in itself. Because she cannot understand it, it cannot be understood. It makes no sense to her, so it is nonsense.
The reason Marx abstracts the exchange-value character of the commodity from the use-value character of the commodity in his head is precisely because modern society has already made this reduction through the process of exchange in reality. Abstraction isn't some arbitrary process. Marx is "reproducing the concrete in thought." Does Rosa not understand that Marx appropriated the concrete in thought before he rationally reconstructed it in Capital? She arbitrarily posits abstractions as impossibly mysterious things that can't actually exist anywhere, either in a person's head or as a social process. No wonder both types of abstractions are mysterious to her. In truth, it only requires a modest bit effort to understand: X happens in the world; Y happens in the mind when thinking about X that happened in the world. Marx is materialist, not a crude materialist like Rosa. This means that, for Marx, actual material and social processes occur prior to and independent of our thought processes about them. Marx is capturing the intelligibly of a "mystifying" social reality in Capital by moving from the most abstract categories, such as value, to the most concrete categories, such as price of production. This method demystifies the inverted picture of the world that is presented to the everyday consciousness of individuals, whose actions create the abstractions (economic categories) that rule over them. I have no clue what Rosa thinks Marx is doing? Gesturing? That is the only mystery going on here.
Because of Rosa's bad faith method of argumentation, I am forced to cut and paste a rather long explanation of this social process with quite a bit of preamble. She pretends to have never read it. I challenge her to tell me where I go wrong:
[I have posted this material to Appendix E.]
The Impersonal Domination of Capital
Rosa:
"In a recent e-mail, MS asserted that capital has certain 'purposes'. And here we seen where importing anything from Hegel has landed us, we end up mystifying capital as if it were a human being!"
What's mystifying is the fact that someone who claims to have been a Marxist for over 30 years doesn't understand that Marx demonstrates capital has its own purposes irrespective of human needs. Indeed, human needs are subordinate to the needs of capital. It is truly mindboggling. Since Rosa does not discuss Capital, I do not know where she's coming from with statements like the one above. Does she think capitalists subjectively determine the structure of society by an act of their individual wills? Does she not understand capitalists are no less determined by the purposes of capital than wage labourers? Does she think the capitalist class exploits wage labour because they are bad people or greedy?
Rosa claims not to accept Analytical Marxism, which is bourgeois Marxism or not Marxism at all. But from what I am forced to gather, Analytical Marxism would make sense of her incredulity about the determinative nature of economic forms. Analytical Marxists posit the individual as the theoretical subject of society. So it kind of makes sense that Rosa misunderstands Marx to be saying capital is a human being when he describes capital as a "subject" and a "self-moving substance." Her interpretation apparently lacks the notion of conceptual necessity. Marx is giving a conceptual reconstruction of the economic law of motion of capital in Capital. His critique is not from the perspective of subjective individuals, who he calls "character masks" of economic categories (i.e., capital and labour power).
Marx does investigate the consciousness of individuals at certain points in Capital, most explicitly the section on the Fetishism of Commodities and the Trinity Formula. In those sections, Marx demonstrates how social relations between people become objectified in material things (e.g., instruments of labour). Things, then, give the objective appearance of eternally existing in their socially determined state (i.e., as capital) to the individuals responsible for creating them. This is why, in the Grundrisse, Marx say we are "ruled by abstractions." Socially determined forms of organization, such as the immediate producers being wage labourers, become normalized. Wage labour appears to be labour pure and simple. Formal characteristics of the social structure (i.e., commodity-form, value-form, capital-form) determine the potential actions available to individual living in a society with such forms. If society reproduces itself over time, then its form and content become adequate to each other. Marx continually chided the classical political economists for neglecting the dialectic of form and content, and the impact it had on our understanding of social operations:
Political Economy has indeed analysed, however incompletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value [i.e., why does this content take the value form- MS]. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
It is one of the chief failings of classical economy that it has never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and, in particular, of their value, in discovering that form under which value becomes exchange value. Even Adam Smith and Ricardo, the best representatives of the school, treat the form of value as a thing of no importance, as having no connection with the inherent nature of commodities. The reason for this is not solely because their attention is entirely absorbed in the analysis of the magnitude of value. It lies deeper. The value form of the product of labour is not only the most abstract, but is also the most universal form, taken by the product in bourgeois production, and stamps that production as a particular species of social production, and thereby gives it its special historical character.33
This abstract determination, value, takes "mastery over man" when it becomes the subject and self-moving substance of a social process, that is, when money is used to make more money through a specific social form of (re)production. Marx calls this formally determined process the "General Form of Capital," the title of Chapter Four of Capital: M – C – M’.
Under the general formula of capital, valorization (M’) becomes the imperative of production. This means that an individual capital that is able to turn an initial sum of value into more value with the most proficiency is structurally advantaged over other individual capitals. What's more, Marx demonstrated how this imperative is independent of the will of any individual capitalist on a personal level. In societies with a capitalist mode of production, all of life's necessities and luxuries (food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, etc.) are produced in the commodity-form. The use-value character of the commodity is obtained and actually consumed if and only if it is first realized in its characteristic as an exchange value. This means that life's necessities are mediated through monetary exchange because the direct producers do not own or control their own means of production or subsistence, which is necessary to reproduce themselves. They are forced to sell their only commodity -- labour power for a wage -- and purchase the product of their own labour, as a class, from the capitalist class who takes legal possession of the social product in the form of private property. Accordingly, monetary exchange overtakes the social provisioning process. Demand for capitalistically produced goods is divorced from human need and desire. Demand, as an economic determination, is different than need and desire. Demand is need and desire backed by money. Production based on monetary demand is structurally oriented to the abstract value character of the commodity, money being value’s “necessary form of appearance,” instead of the use value characteristic. Why? Because capitalist producers only "risk their capital" on the assumption that someone will be able to pay for the result of production with money.
No single person or collection of persons makes the conscious decision that production taking this social form. The economic abstraction or category of "capital" as "self-expanding-value" formally determines production. Human beings are the "character masks" of economic categories. If an actual flesh and blood capitalist does not act in accordance with the "character mask" of capital, then he pays the price. Put differently, if an individual capitalist wants to be a good guy and use all of his productive property to produce use-values that will be directly consumed without being exchanged for money, he will not be a capitalist for long. It literally does not matter what he wants. The economic form of capital has its own purposes; namely, the aim or end of valorization operates with iron necessity, if the capitalist mode of production prevails. Individuals who do not align themselves to capital’s purposes are disciplined by this “bewitched and distorted” social form, which has taken "mastery over man." That is, a capitalist will not be a capitalist for long if she does not produce for profit and wage labourers are forced to run into the arms of capitalists (for money) if they want to eat.
Does this mean Marx ended "up mystifying capital as if it were a human being!"? No. Economic forms do not have purpose in the same way humans have purposes. Just like heaven doesn't have the purpose of scaring souls into good behavior. But it appears to have this purpose to people. Just like the state does not have the purpose of harmonizing civil society. But it appears to have this purpose to people. These structures are alienated forms that appear to have their own purposes independent of the individuals constituting them. That is the point! All of these economic categories or abstractions that "rule over" Man are nothing more than the results of the labour of the working class in an alienated form.
[The following is a long section MS added to his response, the bulk of which I totally agree with (providing the Hegelian jargon -- with which Marx merely "coquetted" -- and other obscure terms drawn from ruling-class thought have been excised), so it is far from clear why MS sent it. I have reformatted it, and corrected a few typos and abbreviations. I have also modified the spelling to agree with UK English.]
Marx begins Capital with these lines. Their importance cannot be overstated:
The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of a commodity. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg. 125)
The investigation of Capital, from beginning to end, is situated within a society where "the capitalist mode of production prevails." Wealth as such is not the object of investigation, but, rather, the social form of wealth under a capitalist system. Marx starts with the most common feature of that system, the commodity, not fully-formed but in its germinal state. Contained within the commodity-form are all of the contradictions of capitalism that Marx reveals in the course of his analysis.
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg. 163)
The commodity-form of production is not only full of internal contradictions. It also has the characteristic of being a very strange thing, a fetish. More accurately stated, the historically determined organization of bourgeois society encourages people to make a fetish of commodities. We transfer onto commodities a power they do not possess as physical objects because productive relations between people take the form of appearance of social relations between things when those things are produced inside a capitalist society. The process of mediating our material needs through the social form of capitalist commodity production mystifies the products of our own labour. In a word, it gives those products the form of value.
Now, if you've never thought critically about how a capitalist economy works or never had the benefit of reading Marx, then all of that probably sounds like some pretty crazy shit. About as crazy as telling Joshua of the Hebrew Bible that the Sun is the stationary center of the universe (or our solar system) and the Earth revolves around it. Only a madman would think such a thing. It is obvious that the Sun rises in East and sets in the West. But, in reality, the Sun rising and falling around the Earth is merely the form of appearance that the Sun takes from our immediate experience. If we took the Sun simply as it appears, never thought critically about its movements or lack thereof, then we would never be able to apprehend the nature of our solar system.
Critical thought demands abstraction. We must organize the manifold objects of reality in the thought realm of our minds, which means we have to provisionally distance ourselves from the complex, concrete appearances and start with the most simple and abstract category that captures the phenomena we are attempting to understand. Hence, Marx starts with the commodity in the abstract.
Commodity production is not a self-sufficient form of production. The material objects produced and the services performed are not meant to fulfill the needs of the individuals who create those various social goods and services. In other words, sociality is indirect in a society where the commodity form of production has been generalized. The only purpose for producing goods under this social arrangement is to exchange them for money. This gives commodity form -- and the labour that underlies it -- a two-fold character.
Commodities are material objects with a material form. They are use-values. Commodities are also social objects with a social form. They have exchange-values. Being two-fold, however, does not mean that commodities qua use and exchange are two separate things. A commodity is a unitary object with an internal contradiction: both a use-value and an exchange-value at the same time. Let's tear this unity apart by making a distinction in the mind that does not exist in (the) reality (of a society with a capitalist mode of production) in order to better understand the two-fold nature of the commodity, which presents itself to us as a single unified thing.
The natural form of a commodity is its use-value. Take a chair, for instance. It has certain material properties. It is made of wood. Its consistency is hard. Its texture is smooth. Etc. A commodity's natural form gives it a particular utility and allows it to meet a particular human need. Chairs as use-values serve our human need to plop our asses down somewhere other than the floor. Thus we use chairs because they fulfill a want, need, or desire.
Of course, making chairs as use-values is not a unique feature that only occurs in capitalist societies, which is Marx's prescribed area of concern in Capital. So use-values as such, as useful material objects, do not differentiate capitalist societies from pre-capitalist societies. Creating use-values is a "nature imposed necessity" for human existence. All social forms of production require use-values, such as chairs. Asses, or their human carriers, desired elevated platforms to plop themselves on in previous societies not organized under the commodity-form. They, too, produced chairs as use-values. But they did so under a radically different social form, a feudal or slave form for instance.
In Capital, Marx is not concerned with use-value as a transhistorical category applicable to all forms of social production. He is interested in the highly peculiar social form use-values take in capitalist societies where commodity production has become generalized. However, to differentiate how use-values appear in capitalist societies in contrast to earlier time periods, Marx repeatedly draws the reader's attention to the fact that use-values were the aim of production under all previous social forms, which is not the case under capitalism.
Use-values are transhistorical because they are the bedrock upon which any society stands. No society would be able to reproduce itself without them. Understandably, this led to a conception of social wealth that was predicated upon use-value production in previous societies. Conversely, in capitalist societies, wealth is not constituted on the basis of use-values. When social wealth (as use-values) is mediated through commodity production (as exchange-values) it becomes something a little more abstract. Wealth predominantly takes the form of appearance of money, a quantitative number, such as the rate of profit or one's personal net worth.
But, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Exchange-value emerges with the comparison of two use-values that were produced for the purpose of being exchanged, the ratio in which commodity A exchanges for commodity B. Marx claims -- and then goes on to demonstrate in three volumes -- that all of the categories and contradictions of capitalism arise from this simple commodity relation. As Marx puts it, "The whole mystery of the form of value lies hidden in this simple form [i.e. X commodity A = Y commodity B -M.S.]." I have summarized Marx's demonstration of how the value form (logically not historically) develops from the simple form to the expanded form to the general form to the general universal equivalent (money) here: Marshall Solomon's answer to, To Marx, what is the difference between the general and universal equivalent?
Marx claims that labour takes the form of value when the products of individual, private labour are mediated through the process of commodity exchange. But what exactly is being compared, related, and exchanged in this process? Better yet, what makes it possible for my private labour to be exchanged with everyone else's private labour?
All of the products of human labour are, after all, use-values. Isn't that enough of an explanation in itself? People want things they did not create. So they exchange things have created -- mediated through the monetary wage-relation -- for things created by other people. Money simplifies this process by stepping in from outside the logic of the exchange process itself and translates the various forms of privately created "wealth" into monetary terms, thereby facilitating otherwise incompatible transactions. This is the theoretical core of the bourgeois explanation. Well, it is an "explanation" if we extend the meaning of the term to the point of meaninglessness. The fact that commodity producer X can exchange 10 of commodity A, worth $1 dollar a piece, for 5 of commodity B, worth $2 a piece, produced by commodity producer Y is merely an empirical observation. It is not an explanation of anything.
We can remain at the surface level of appearance and analyze the movements of supply and demand all day. But such exercises do not get us very far. They simple demonstrate that something is the case. At a certain point in time, more people with money subjectively desired the utility of commodity A than the utility of commodity B, which increased the demand of A relative to B. It does not explain why it is the case that A is capable of being exchanged with B in the first the place.
How, then, does Marx explain the exchangeability of goods produced capitalistically, the value-form?
First, let's be clear about what Marx is not doing in his explanation of how qualitatively heterogeneous material goods (i.e., use-values) are rendered qualitatively homogeneous and, thereby, capable of being quantitatively compared with one another in exchange (i.e., as exchange-values). This warning is necessary because there have been many commentators and critics, starting with Bohm-Bawerk, who have completely misread Marx on this issue. They mistakenly think Marx is using the method of formal abstraction when he claims all of the various exchange-values, qualitatively different commodities, are reducible to a "third thing," abstract labour. Bohm-Bawerk is not alone, unfortunately. There have been plenty of Marxists that have made this same mistake.
Having knowledge of Hegel helps here. Marx relies on the 'mighty thinker' quite a bit in the early sections of Capital. Neither of them, for the most part, made formal abstractions in their analysis of the phenomenal world. That is, borrowing from Hegel's method, Marx is not subjectively determining a specific feature of exchange-value that he thinks is the most appropriate candidate to serve as the basis of exchangeability. He is not selecting out -- formally abstracting -- one common element shared by the various capitalistically produced goods in front of him and saying, "Ahh, I choose abstract labour to be the common characteristic."
In Marx’s analysis, the subsumption of a particular under a universal is not the result of thought imposing itself on matter. A universal emerges from a real process: the actual movement and development of the particular. This is because form and content are intimately connected, "interrelated." The conceptual and empirical, the subjective and objective are not radically separated for Marx and Hegel:
One cannot forget that, on the question of the relation between content and form, Marx took the standpoint of Hegel, and not of Kant. Kant treated form as something external in relation to the content, and as something which adheres to the content from the outside. From the standpoint of Hegel's philosophy, the content is not in itself something to which form adheres from the outside. Rather, through its development, the content itself gives birth to the form which was already latent in the content. Form necessarily grows out of the content itself. This is a basic premise of Hegel's and Marx's methodology, a premise which is opposed to Kant's methodology. (I. I. Rubin, Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value, pg.117)
Bohm-Bawerk thought Marx was making a formal abstraction because that is precisely what he did when positing subjective (marginal) utility as the common feature of human beings, not commodities, that makes qualitatively different goods commensurable. The supposed contingency of abstract labour being the equalizing source of value is what has lent Bawerk's criticisms so much force. That is, if Marx was making a formal abstraction, then abstract labour is an arbitrary selection that could very well be replaced by utility or scarcity or any other suitable quality that seems to render commodities commensurable. Thankfully, Marx is doing no such thing.
The other aspect of formal abstraction that differentiates it from Marx’s method is explained by Tony Smith:
[T]he common feature [when selected by way of formal abstraction] may not have anything whatsoever to do with the inner nature of the phenomena being examined. (Tony Smith, The Logic of Marx's Capital, pg. 69; bold mine)
This is key. Remember, Marx is not analyzing external relations as they appear on the surface of capitalist society at this early stage of Capital where abstract labour is discussed. That comes much later in Vol. 3. Beginning a rational reconstruction of the capitalist system with how things immediately appear only causes confusion, as in the muddled theories of the vulgar economists such as Bohm-Bawerk.
Marx refused to bring competition into his analysis until the inner, invisible structure of capital was fully articulated in volumes 1 and 2.
The finished configurations of the economic relations, as these are visible on the surface, in their actual existence [i.e., in competition -- MS], and therefore also in the notions with which the bearers and agents of these relations seek to gain an understanding of them, is very different from the configuration of their inner core, which is essential but concealed, and the concept corresponding to it. (Marx, Capital Vol. 3, pg. 311; bold mine)
Marx is attempting to demystifying the historically determined social form of wealth that dominates our lives in bourgeois society. In order to do so, he cannot appeal to external and contingent aspects of the system. That would not be the "scientifically correct method." He has to demonstrate how the inner core, the essence, necessarily expresses itself through the appearances: value as price, surplus-value as profit, and the rate of surplus-value as the rate of profit.
If abstract labour was one explanation among others, a formal abstraction, selected out by his own subjective choosing, then Marx would not be fulfilling his "ultimate aim," which was "to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society," as stated in the 1867 Preface to Capital. In other words, he would not be rationally reconstructing the objective and immanent laws of modern society, laying bare its "essential but concealed" features. He would be constructing (or creating) "laws" out of his subjective experience of the external movements of modern society as they immediately appeared to him.
At risk of beating a dead horse, let me let Smith drive this point home:
The notion of abstract labour is not won through a formal cognitive process of abstracting a common feature shared by all the commodities. It emerges instead from the social process of commodity exchange, a real process that is independent of the subjective cognitive acts of the theorist. And abstract labour is an abstraction that uncovers the essential determination of the object realm under investigation. It captures the intrinsic specificity of a particular form of social production. For both of these reasons abstract labour must be considered a "real abstraction" rather than as a merely formal abstraction. (Tony Smith, The Logic of Marx's Capital, pg. 69)
We now know, according to Marx, abstract labour is the substance of value (i.e., what equalizes or commensurates commodities). But what, exactly, is abstract labour?
This concept is probably the most problematic and difficult for readers of Marx to understand. In fact, I think it is fair to say, abstract labour is the least understood concept Marx develops in Capital. This is unfortunate because it is one of the most essential for proper understanding of Capital. In a letter to Engels (Aug. 24, 1867), Marx described the two-fold character of labour (concrete/abstract) as "fundamental to all understanding of the facts."
The difficulty of understanding abstract labour is inherent to the subject matter itself. Unfortunately, this difficulty has been compounded by traditional Marxism's poor understanding of the concept. There are two general shortcomings that occur when dealing with abstract labour. Both stem from a lack of attention being paid to social form. Abstract labour is either ignored as an insignificant concept altogether or crudely reduced to the concept of physiological labour.
A paradigmatic example of the latter is quoted by Rubin:
[Karl] Kautsky writes: "On the one hand, labour appears to us as the productive expenditure of human labour-power in general, on the other hand, as specific human activity for the attainment of a given object. The first aspect of labour forms the common element in all the productive activities carried on by men; the second varies with the nature of the activity."
This generally-accepted definition can be reduced to the following, very simple statement: concrete labour is the expenditure of human energy in a determined form (clothesmaking, weaving, etc.). Abstract labour is the expenditure of human energy as such, independently of the given forms. Defined in this way, the concept of abstract labour is a physiological concept, devoid of all social and historical elements. The concept of abstract labour exists in all historical epochs independently of this or that social form of production.* (II Rubin, Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, pg. 132).
*To be fair, Kautsky does draw attention to the fetish character of value-form in The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx. However, he fails to sufficiently distinguish the form of value from its content and magnitude -- MS.
Abstract labour is not labour in general or "the expenditure of labour-power in general." There is no such thing or process that actually exists in the material world called labour in general. We have the cognitive ability to form a concept of labour in general by selecting out similarities between different labour processes that occur in different times and places. And, then, we can analyze the concept in our minds. What we cannot do is turn around and give that concept causal efficacy in the actual world. I can think of unicorns, but I cannot make them drive a plow. For Marx, abstract labour has causal efficacy: it "creates value." Thus abstract labour captures, because it emerges from, a material process that must occur prior to it being conceptually understood as an actuality with causal efficacy. Labour in general is a formal abstraction, and a helpful one for certain analytical purposes. Abstract labour is not.
Physiological or concrete labour is a presupposition of abstract labour, or its necessary condition. But in itself physiological labour is insufficient to the concept of value. The result of physiological labour is a material object with a specific purpose or utility, but not necessarily a material object with the social form of value. Every act of physiological labour "has regard" for the form of its expenditure. The end product of physiological labour is a sensuous object, a use-value. This is not the case for abstract labour:
Let us now look at the residue of the products of labour. There is nothing left of them in each case but a phantom-like objectivity; they a merely congealed quantities of homogenous human labour, i.e. human labour without regard to the form of its expenditure. All these things [capitalistically produced goods -- MS] tells us is that human labour has been expended to produce them, human labour has been accumulated in them. As crystal of this social substance, which is common to them all, they are values -- commodity values. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg. 128; bold mine)
Concrete or physiological labour, the type of labour that creates use-values, and its residue, leaves more than a phantom-like objectivity behind. It leaves a very real material thing, a use-value. Moreover, concrete labour in capitalist societies is private, individual labour. The means of production are privately owned. The labour process is initiated by individual owners of the means of production. A good produced by private labour is not a social substance in its existence as the immediate result of physiological, concrete labour (see above where I discuss the indirect sociality of labour in capitalist societies).
Marx explains:
As use-values, commodities differ above in quality, while as exchange-values [the form of appearance of value -- MS] they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-value. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg. 128; bold mine)
And reiterates:
Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values; on this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity of commodities as physical objects. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg.138; bold mine)
The products of labour, as the immediate result of concrete labour, are not values. They are sensuous objects. Conversely, when the same products of labour become values, not "an atom of matter enters into" their "objectivity," which Marx has described as phantom-like (or spectral). Hopefully, Marx's claim that commodities are full of "metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" is starting make at least a little sense. If concrete labour does not create value, then the nature of value in the commodity-form is, indeed, a very strange thing. In order to "see" this invisible, phantom-like social substance created by abstract labour we have to examine actual exchange-values, the form of appearance of value, in a value-relation.
Let's use Marx's example of the simple form of value linen and a coat. These are two commodities that have been produced capitalistically by private, concrete labour. In their natural forms, as linen and a coat, they are not values. They are use-values. In order to become values, i.e., for the concrete labour that produced them to become abstract, they must go through a material process of exchange. The owner of the linen possesses her commodity in its natural form as a use-value, but it is not a use-value for her. It is a use-value for the person who consumes it after it has been exchanged. For her, it is a potential exchange-value. The sole purpose of producing the linen was to exchange it for, in this case, a coat. In order for the linen to be an exchange-value it has to actually be realized in exchange.
Moreover, if the linen and coat are going to be exchanged fairly, which is the presupposition of commutative justice underlying and justifying bourgeois society, they must be exchanged in an equal proportion of something. This something cannot be their immediate existence as use-values. For, as use-values, they are obviously two different things. The natural forms of linen and coats are incommensurable, qualitatively heterogeneous. There must be a "third thing." As mentioned above, this third thing is abstract labour, but not abstract labour selected out by Marx in the same way that the subjective utility of linen and coats is selected out by the vulgar economists.
The reduction of linen and coats to equal "congealed quantities" of a "homogenous substance," abstract labour, occurs in the social process of exchange. In Marx's example, 20 yards of linen = 1 coat. This reduction happens in exchange because of the specific social form of production in capitalist societies, what Marx calls the value-form. When the linen producer (i.e., when her hired wage labour) is creating 20 yards of linen in her factory, there is no way for us to know if it represents "1 coat's worth a [of?] value." We could go into the factory and empirically observe the workers sweating away their physiological labour to produce the linen, but we could not be certain the workers were actually producing a material good with value. Simply put, the substance of their labour is not social during the production process alone. It has to become social in exchange.
Marx brings this point out most clearly in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
The commodity is a use-value for its owner only so far as it is an exchange-value. The commodity therefore has still to become a use-value, in the first place a use-value for others. Since it is not a use-value for its owner, it must be a use-value for owners of other commodities. If this is not the case then the labour expended on it was useless labour and the result accordingly is not a commodity. The commodity must, on the other hand, become a use-value for its owner, since its means of existence is outside of it, in the use-values of other people's commodities. To become a use-value, the commodity must encounter a particular need which it can satisfy. Thus the use-values of commodities become use-values by a mutual exchange of places: they pass from the hands of those for whom they were means of exchange into the hands for whom they serve as consumer goods. Only as the result of this universal alienation of commodities does the labour in them become useful. (pg. 42)
[T]he commodity as it comes into being is only materialised individual labour-time of a specific kind, and not universal labour-time. The commodity is thus not immediately exchange-value, but still has to become exchange-value." (pg.43)
A use-value is also a commodity when it is produced for the sole purpose of being exchanged. In capitalist societies, commodities are produced -- they "come into being" -- as quantities of individual labour-time in privately-owned firms. The concrete labour that produces the 20 yards of linen has not yet proven itself social at the point of production. To become social, the linen must be exchanged with a coat. The process of exchange gives the linen social validity. That is, when the product of private labour is exchanged, the labour-time spent producing the linen proves itself to be part of what Marx's calls universal labour-time, a quantum the total labour-time required to produce the total social product. In other words, linen met a social need backed by effective demand. The labour expended on producing the linen was not wasted labour. It was, in fact, value-producing-labour: abstract labour.
The "demand" in this example is represented by the 1 coat (20 yards of linen = 1 coat). This should seem somewhat odd. People do not barter use-values, as a general rule, in capitalist societies. What's more, no society with a capitalist mode of production ever mediated the process of exchange through barter as a general rule. Marx is bringing out a logical, not a historical point, here. There was never a time of "simple commodity production" that corresponds to the development of the exchange-relation from the simple to the expanded to the universal form as articulated in the first chapter of Capital. This notion (and its nomenclature) was introduced by Engels. Marx never used the phrase "simple commodity production" (see The Myth of 'Simple Commodity Production' (2005) by Chris Arthur for textual proof of this claim). Marx was demonstrating the logical development of ‘simple commodity circulation’, that is, how money necessarily emerges from the value-relation.
A capitalistically produced commodity requires an "other." It must be brought into an exchange-relation with another commodity for its own value to be known. Again, this is because a commodity's value is not a material substance that can be directly observed. It is an "essential but concealed" social substance that only emerges in exchange. In the simple form of value, two material use-values are compared in the commodity-form (X commodity A = Y commodity B; 20 yards of linen = 1 coat). The exchange-value of linen (relative form) is reflected in the use-value of the coats (equivalent form). If linen did not have an "other," a coat, it would not be able to have its value expressed. The linen would only have itself to compare with itself: 20 yards of linen = 20 yards of linen, a tautology. To manifest itself as an exchange-value, it has to come out of isolation:
A commodity is a use-value or object of utility, and a 'value.' It appears as the two-fold thing it really is as soon as its value possesses its own particular form of manifestation, which is distinct from its natural form. This form of manifestation is exchange-value, and a commodity never has this form when looked at in isolation, but only when it is a value-relation or exchange relation with a second commodity of different kind. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg. 152)
After the need for an "other" is established, the next question natural follows:
Why does 20 yards of linen equal one coat and not 10 yards or 40 yards?
We know what the "third thing" that commensurates commodities is, namely -- abstract labour. This is the substance of value. We now need to establish the magnitude or measure of value. Commodities are treated as homogenous quantities of a 'value-forming substance,' abstract human labour in exchange. This act of exchange abstracts the commodities' material qualities away. It allows the commodities' magnitudes to be assessed by a quantitative measure: time. But not pure and simple time as such. As we have seen, commodities must meet a social need backed by demand in order to be exchanged. They must be socially necessary. The labour-time required to produce the commodities is assessed in relation to the social necessary labour time required to create a commodity of the same general type.
This is a result of the social form of production. That is, a consequences of the means of production being privately-owned is the uncertainty about the exact amount of time that is necessary to produce a good at its social average. Individual labour-time does not always -- in fact almost never -- perfectly corresponds with the average social labour time, which is moving average. Individual labour time (private labour) must prove itself to be universal labour-time (socially necessary labour). The proving ground is the process of exchange where private producers compare the time in took them to produce the same type of commodity. The individual time to produce commodity X, which includes the labour-time to produced all of the inputs required to produce commodity X, is held up against the standard of socially necessary labour time in exchange.
Thus, 20 yards of linen equals 1 coat because the socially necessary labour time it takes to produce 1 coat is equivalent to the socially necessary labour time to produce 20 yards of linen. If linen producer X produces 20 yards of linen at the social average of 10 hours (i.e., his individual labour time coincides with the socially necessary labour time) and producer Y takes 15 hours to produce 20 yards, it does not mean producer Y can exchange his 20 yards of linen for more than 1 coat. He has simply produced the same amount of value as producers X, but in more (individual) time. If he wants to stay in business, then he'll need to make changes: introduce a better technology (which has a tendency to lower to the rate of profit), reduce the price of inputs such as raw materials and wage labour (which causes class struggle), speed up the machines used to spin the linen, etc. Hopefully, you can see why Marx claimed all the contradictions of capital emerge from this simple commodity relation, X commodity A = Y commodity B.
Briefly, one last point. Linen and coats are, obviously, not exchanged for one another in the "real movement" of capital and labour-times are not compared with one another in exchange.
Marx begins his rational reconstruction with two material commodities in order to bring out a logical point. The function of the coat in the simple commodity relation is to realize the exchange-value of linen in circulation. Thus, in the context of the value-relation, exchangeability is its use-value; that is, the use-value of the coat is not being considered in its natural form, as a material object with the ability to keep humans warm in cold weather. Its substance of value (abstract labour) and its magnitude of value (socially necessary labour time) is what matters. This is because, as mentioned above, commodities are not produced for their use-values in societies where the commodity-form has become universalized. Capitalist owners initiate the production process in order to turn abstract value into more abstract value. From the perspective of the "consciousness of the economic agent," the capitalist, who operates on the surface level, production is initiated to turn money into more money. That is, the capitalist does not operate in terms of value. He operates in terms of the necessary form of appearance of value, monetary price.
Thus the socially validated, universal abstract labour-time crystalized in commodities is also expressed in monetary price:
The necessity of money other than labour-time arises precisely because the quantity of labour time must not be expressed in its immediate, particular product, but in a mediated, general product. (Marx, Grundrisse, pg. 167)
The truth is that the exchange-value relation - of commodities as mutually equal and equivalent objectifications of labour time - comprises contradictions which find their objective expression in a money which is distinct from labour time. (Marx, Grundrisse, pg. 169)
Money as the measure of value is the necessary form of appearance of the measure of value which is immanent in commodities, namely labour time. (Marx, Capital Vol. 1, pg. 188)
Capitalist societies are monetary societies. Linen is exchanged for money, not coats. As demonstrated in the linked answer above, money emerges from the simple commodity relation as the universal equivalent. The use-value of money is its immediate and universal social validity. It does not need to be socially validated in exchange. It socially validates every other commodity: the act of exchanging money for the product of labour realizes the commodity's immanent value, actualizes its potential; thereby, reducing the labour expended on its production to an aliquot part of the total labour-time required to produce the total social product, i.e., universal, abstract, social, value-producing labour.
This mind-melting, mystified, topsy-turvy, inverted, alienated form of social production is the value-form. Failing to account for the value-form of production as a dialectic of Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange is a blind-spot in traditional Marxist theory. Production-alone cannot account for the creation of value in capitalist societies.
Latest Update: 30/07/20
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