Djehuti
19th April 2005, 18:18
I copy/paste my post from this thread:
http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?acti...397975&start=15 (http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=theory&num=1090397975&start=15)
-------------------------------------------
Marx' method is very complex. These kinds of attempts to systematizise or schematize will usually end in abstract discussions on high academic level in the worst case, or extreme simplifications at best. So do not use this post as a template for what Marx' dialectics is all about, but rather as a hint.
Because there is a whole lot of more or less idiotic statements on what Marx' dialectics is all about, it could be a good idea to first determine what it is not. The most common misunderstandings that I know about are:
- Dialectics as the thesis-antithesis-synthesis-triad. This misunderstanding is thoroughly false. Marx never even used the triad, and the triad is totally misleading even as a "simplification" of Marx' method. In fact, Hegel himself rejected the triad as early as 1807.
- Dialectics as the driving force of history. Another usual misunderstanding is that you see dialectics as some sort of a divine power that drives the development of history forth; dialectics as some kind of "engine of history", so to speak. This misunderstanding is often connected with...
- Dialectics as "the law of history". This misunderstanding, together with "dialectics as the driving force of history" misunderstands dialectics as some sort of a formula for the "secret" of history and the universe. Dialectics is not a - transcendent or non-transcendent - nature bound law, nor any mathematic formula that proves or predicts anything. Dialectics do not prove anything. Dialectics does not make anything happen.
- Dialectics as determinism and/or teleology. It is also common to believe that dialectics is some kind of schedule, for example that dialectics "proves" that feudalism is followed by capitalism that is followed by socialism that is followed...etc. Well, you could argue that dialectics can help us understand seeing the limitations and possibilities within a context, but not that it could give us more than just that.
Dialectics is nothing else but a way to think that sets change, movement, collaboration and interaction in a totality. To use dialectics means that when you think and try to explain your surroundings, you are not doing this in terms of "things" (things that is something that has its own history and has external relations to other "things".) but in "processes" (lack any better word) and "relations" (that in difference to the "things" have internal relations to other processes/relations. "Relations" are thus also their connections to other relations!). Does it sound tricky and complicated as hell? Well, it is.
Totality and immanens.
The starting points of dialectics is the concrete wholeness; the totality. It is basically about a break with the thinking of the Enlightenment and their theories of the subject. Everything stands in relation to it self and it's surroundings. There are no totally autonomous "things" that meet and interact in a vacuum, but (as I wrote above) the "things" is just as much the other "things" that it stands in relation to. There for we abandon the "thing" completely and instead we talk about "processes" and "relations". We only take interest in social relations.
Dialectics is the tool we use to grasp this "totality in movement".
Ok, so this is the starting point. The inherent relations and movements of the whole, as its contents ("being") and form. But soon we will meet trouble. How do you grasp a totality in movement? The spontaneous thought is that you would likely need to be an omnipotent god. But it is not really that bad. The solution lies within the process of abstraction.
Abstraction
To understand and systematize the totality it is necessary to abstract spheres and units that can be analyzed. These are called abstractions. "Capital", "commodities" and "the working class" are examples of abstractions. But, where do we draw the lines? Where we can say that one thing begins and another ends is conceptual distinctions that is changed over times, and are social constructions. What differs Marx' process of abstraction from others is that he abstract (inherent) social relations out of a totality. This means that the abstractions Marx does aren't given or fixed, but are of source also in movement.
An example. When Marx abstracts the abstraction "capital", as a process, this includes original accumulation,
absolute surplus value production, relative surplus value production, etc in the abstraction of what "capital" is in itself. When Marx abstracts the abstraction "capital", as a social relation, this brings with "commodities", "value", "working class". This is therefore not about abstracting autonomous things that is put together in a pattern, like a pattern. The abstractions must be connected and constitute a wholeness.
It is just this complexity, abstractions of processes and relations of a totality, that saves Marx from metaphysics. Since Marx' abstractions are no invention of his mind.
He analyzes the superficial forms of appearing to push through these and find their inner context, relation and processes. He does not move down and up through several levels of abstraction. He, so to speak, "zooms in" and "discovers" its (the abstractions) "secret", and then "zooms out" and sees the movement of the totality. This happens once, a walking from the concrete to the abstract and back to the concrete.
For example capital, the working class and value are abstractions, but concrete abstractions. We can for example not see capital, but when a factory is closed down and moves its production, we are concretely confronted by capital. The "border" between the working class and capitalist class is sometimes very diffuse and hard to see. This is because the classes are abstractions that are defined historically. (The "border" is thus determined by the social relations that constitutes the abstraction, that is class struggle. Class struggle defines the classes.) But when conflict flares up, where ever you are, the border immediately becomes much more clear.
(It also becomes clear that communism really must mean a revolution in the right sense of the word. It is not possible to "gree" any capitalist categories, for example (wage)workers as in the illusion of self-administration, from the concrete totality. All or nothing. A single choice: suicide or revolution!.)
Account
Finally we have the account. Dialectics helps us to use our thoughts to push through the totality of capitalism, and explain the "hidden being" (the social relations and processes) of its forms of appearance. Marx' Capital is an account of his dialectic critique of the political economy (Grundrisse, and theories on the surplus value, etc on the other hand are the actual research). If the research is the walk from the abstract to the concrete, the account is a rise up from the abstract "depth" to the concrete "surface".
It is while reading/interpreting the account that many of the most common mistakes is committed. Marx' research did not begin with an analysis of the commodity, as the account (Capital) does. To understand the law of value and the abstractions "class", "capital", etc, we will first have to begin with the "being" of capitalism, its inner context from which we realize that the commodity is the fundamental "cell" of capitalism. To understand capital -- "the laws of capitalism" -- Marx makes a delimitation. In the first part of Capital, capital is treated from the perspective of the capital. That is why the subjectiveness of the working class is "locked out" from Capital and only is treated as variable capital. You immediately understand that Marx' project was not perfect. He was never done.
(This insight on such a fundamental aspect of Marx', means that we easily can reject practically all "Marxism" that is founded on an one-sided reading of Marx and Capital.)
Besides, because Marx never explicitly formulated his method anywhere (he only brings it up in passing), and his Magnum Opus never was completed, it is extra essential for us communists to really understand dialectics.
*puh*
I really don't have the energy to correct all spelling mistakes. As you see, English is not my first language.
http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?acti...397975&start=15 (http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=theory&num=1090397975&start=15)
-------------------------------------------
Marx' method is very complex. These kinds of attempts to systematizise or schematize will usually end in abstract discussions on high academic level in the worst case, or extreme simplifications at best. So do not use this post as a template for what Marx' dialectics is all about, but rather as a hint.
Because there is a whole lot of more or less idiotic statements on what Marx' dialectics is all about, it could be a good idea to first determine what it is not. The most common misunderstandings that I know about are:
- Dialectics as the thesis-antithesis-synthesis-triad. This misunderstanding is thoroughly false. Marx never even used the triad, and the triad is totally misleading even as a "simplification" of Marx' method. In fact, Hegel himself rejected the triad as early as 1807.
- Dialectics as the driving force of history. Another usual misunderstanding is that you see dialectics as some sort of a divine power that drives the development of history forth; dialectics as some kind of "engine of history", so to speak. This misunderstanding is often connected with...
- Dialectics as "the law of history". This misunderstanding, together with "dialectics as the driving force of history" misunderstands dialectics as some sort of a formula for the "secret" of history and the universe. Dialectics is not a - transcendent or non-transcendent - nature bound law, nor any mathematic formula that proves or predicts anything. Dialectics do not prove anything. Dialectics does not make anything happen.
- Dialectics as determinism and/or teleology. It is also common to believe that dialectics is some kind of schedule, for example that dialectics "proves" that feudalism is followed by capitalism that is followed by socialism that is followed...etc. Well, you could argue that dialectics can help us understand seeing the limitations and possibilities within a context, but not that it could give us more than just that.
Dialectics is nothing else but a way to think that sets change, movement, collaboration and interaction in a totality. To use dialectics means that when you think and try to explain your surroundings, you are not doing this in terms of "things" (things that is something that has its own history and has external relations to other "things".) but in "processes" (lack any better word) and "relations" (that in difference to the "things" have internal relations to other processes/relations. "Relations" are thus also their connections to other relations!). Does it sound tricky and complicated as hell? Well, it is.
Totality and immanens.
The starting points of dialectics is the concrete wholeness; the totality. It is basically about a break with the thinking of the Enlightenment and their theories of the subject. Everything stands in relation to it self and it's surroundings. There are no totally autonomous "things" that meet and interact in a vacuum, but (as I wrote above) the "things" is just as much the other "things" that it stands in relation to. There for we abandon the "thing" completely and instead we talk about "processes" and "relations". We only take interest in social relations.
Dialectics is the tool we use to grasp this "totality in movement".
Ok, so this is the starting point. The inherent relations and movements of the whole, as its contents ("being") and form. But soon we will meet trouble. How do you grasp a totality in movement? The spontaneous thought is that you would likely need to be an omnipotent god. But it is not really that bad. The solution lies within the process of abstraction.
Abstraction
To understand and systematize the totality it is necessary to abstract spheres and units that can be analyzed. These are called abstractions. "Capital", "commodities" and "the working class" are examples of abstractions. But, where do we draw the lines? Where we can say that one thing begins and another ends is conceptual distinctions that is changed over times, and are social constructions. What differs Marx' process of abstraction from others is that he abstract (inherent) social relations out of a totality. This means that the abstractions Marx does aren't given or fixed, but are of source also in movement.
An example. When Marx abstracts the abstraction "capital", as a process, this includes original accumulation,
absolute surplus value production, relative surplus value production, etc in the abstraction of what "capital" is in itself. When Marx abstracts the abstraction "capital", as a social relation, this brings with "commodities", "value", "working class". This is therefore not about abstracting autonomous things that is put together in a pattern, like a pattern. The abstractions must be connected and constitute a wholeness.
It is just this complexity, abstractions of processes and relations of a totality, that saves Marx from metaphysics. Since Marx' abstractions are no invention of his mind.
He analyzes the superficial forms of appearing to push through these and find their inner context, relation and processes. He does not move down and up through several levels of abstraction. He, so to speak, "zooms in" and "discovers" its (the abstractions) "secret", and then "zooms out" and sees the movement of the totality. This happens once, a walking from the concrete to the abstract and back to the concrete.
For example capital, the working class and value are abstractions, but concrete abstractions. We can for example not see capital, but when a factory is closed down and moves its production, we are concretely confronted by capital. The "border" between the working class and capitalist class is sometimes very diffuse and hard to see. This is because the classes are abstractions that are defined historically. (The "border" is thus determined by the social relations that constitutes the abstraction, that is class struggle. Class struggle defines the classes.) But when conflict flares up, where ever you are, the border immediately becomes much more clear.
(It also becomes clear that communism really must mean a revolution in the right sense of the word. It is not possible to "gree" any capitalist categories, for example (wage)workers as in the illusion of self-administration, from the concrete totality. All or nothing. A single choice: suicide or revolution!.)
Account
Finally we have the account. Dialectics helps us to use our thoughts to push through the totality of capitalism, and explain the "hidden being" (the social relations and processes) of its forms of appearance. Marx' Capital is an account of his dialectic critique of the political economy (Grundrisse, and theories on the surplus value, etc on the other hand are the actual research). If the research is the walk from the abstract to the concrete, the account is a rise up from the abstract "depth" to the concrete "surface".
It is while reading/interpreting the account that many of the most common mistakes is committed. Marx' research did not begin with an analysis of the commodity, as the account (Capital) does. To understand the law of value and the abstractions "class", "capital", etc, we will first have to begin with the "being" of capitalism, its inner context from which we realize that the commodity is the fundamental "cell" of capitalism. To understand capital -- "the laws of capitalism" -- Marx makes a delimitation. In the first part of Capital, capital is treated from the perspective of the capital. That is why the subjectiveness of the working class is "locked out" from Capital and only is treated as variable capital. You immediately understand that Marx' project was not perfect. He was never done.
(This insight on such a fundamental aspect of Marx', means that we easily can reject practically all "Marxism" that is founded on an one-sided reading of Marx and Capital.)
Besides, because Marx never explicitly formulated his method anywhere (he only brings it up in passing), and his Magnum Opus never was completed, it is extra essential for us communists to really understand dialectics.
*puh*
I really don't have the energy to correct all spelling mistakes. As you see, English is not my first language.