Dialectical Phenomenology?

[DeLeonist]

After reading some of Rosa's critique of dialectics and her advocacy of Wittgenstein and ordinary language philosophy, I dusted off from the back of my garage a copy of "Dialectical Phenomenology: Marx's Method" by Roslyn Bologh (partially availabe on googelbooks if you do a search).


The author relies on Wittgenstein and a reading of the Grundrisse to construct a framework for self-conscious social theorising. Bologh puts forth a number of "rules" for social theorising which she believes are implicit in Marx's methodology:


Rule 1: Treat concepts as grounded in an historically specific form of life.


Rule 2: Treat individuals as grounded in an historically specific form of life.


Rule 3: Treat a form of life as a totality of internal relations [this refers to the relations that are necessary for the production of the object of study].


Rule 4: Treat a concrete form of life as contradictory [ a 'concrete' form of life is on which is not self-conscious of the grounds of its production].


I was considering whether to try and get my head around what Bologh is on about some more, but prior to this was wondering whether anybody had read Bologh's work or had any comments on it?


Seems to me her approach may have the potential to combine positive and undogmatic aspects of dialectics and phenomenology with Wittgenstein's approach.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

The probelm with all this is that comrades who argue like Balogh think we can learn something from Hegel. But his 'dialectic' is based on a series of crass logical blunders, which, once exposed, mean that the 'dialectic' is a husk full of hot air with no 'rational core'.

For example, Rule 4: "Treat a concrete form of life as contradictory".

We have yet to be told in clear terms what the meaning of 'contradictory' here is -- and we have only been waiting now for 200 years. Hegelians can't tell us, and neither can dialectical Marxists. Certainly every effort to do so to date has failed; even comrades here have given up trying (as they have on other discussion boards -- either that or they just sulk off, somehow offended that they were even asked to explain themselves).

Rule 3 is obscure too:


Treat a form of life as a totality of internal relations [this refers to the relations that are necessary for the production of the object of study].

Wittgenstein's use of the term 'internal relation' refers to how we use words (in mathermatics, for example). It does not refer to relations in the material world. So, I am not sure what it is doing here.

Rules 1 & 2 seem innocuous in themselves, except one would like to read the details.

Anyway, thankyou for bringing this book to my attention -- I thought I had read everything there was to read on this subject! Clearly not.

And, by the way, there are no 'undogmatic' parts of dialectics. The whole enterprise is a protracted exercise in a priori dogmatics, motivated by a systematic capitulation to the misuse of language.

[DeLeonist]

I'm not sure at this stage whether Bologh is one of the Hegelian Dialectic faithful, or just using fancy terminology to say ordinary things.
E.g. by "contradictory" she may just mean conflicting and leading to change and development.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, who can say? They all use this word, but few, if any, tell us what they mean by it.

[gilhyle]

Heard the name, never read anything by her. Think she might have been an anthropologist. With that title, probably stands in the Kojeve tradition. Whether you call that Hegelian Dialectical faithful or not is debateable. But it is surely just Peter Winch with the idea of contradiction added ?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


But it is surely just Peter Winch with the idea of contradiction added ?

How did you manage to work Winch into this?

[gilhyle]

Its the same anthropological relativism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Its the same anthropological relativism.

Winch was not a relativist.

[gilhyle]

Well its a longtime since i read him but my memory is he didnt want to be a relativist but couldnt sustain any alternative. However, the point was that he had an influence on a certain trend centred on anthropology which was also interested in Kojeve to which Bologh might have been linked. But its all ancient intellectual history and my memory is vague on it. It was only a thought.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Well its a longtime since i read him but my memory is he didnt want to be a relativist but couldnt sustain any alternative.

That is perhaps because you want to shoehorn everyone into an a priori, traditional mould, as a theorist of some sort. Winch, like me, rejected all philosophical theories, so he was neither a relativist nor an anti-relativist.

[gilhyle]

Rejection is not the same as escape.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


Rejection is not the same as escape.

Indeed, but then an accusation is not proof, either, is it?

[gilhyle]

All of which leaves you as your own judge and jury in your own personal spiritual journey.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Gil:


All of which leaves you as your own judge and jury in your own personal spiritual journey.

Whatever fantasy about me that helps you cope...http://www.politicalcrossfire.com/forum/images/smiles/_paperbag_125.gif

[DeLeonist]

I have had a read of an online chapter of Guy Robinson's "Philosophy and demystification" (google it to locate - I can't post links) and see strong resonances there with the approach of Bologh. I find Robinson the more lucid writer of the two.

Both Robinson and Bologh are against the idea of there being absolute foundations for theory.

E.g. Bologh says ".. Marxist theorizing implicitly recognises its own conditions of existence. Its self critique and self-analysis - the limits of its existence - are implicated in its practice " (p 22), and in quoting Postone and Reinicke:

" One of the most powerful aspects of the critique of political economy is that it understands itself as historically determinate and can account for its existence as critique in the process of analyzing and criticizing bourgeois forms. Any attempt to transform it into a positive science falls into inconsistencies - for it is then posited as the historically unique exception standing above the interaction of form and content, social forms and forms of consciousness, which it postulates as its own basis". (p. 26)

Re the use by Bologh of the word 'contradiction' (discussed earlier in this thread), she uses is to refer to contradictions in language rather than the material word:

"A contradiction occurs when a term refers to two mutually exclusive things, A and not-A". (p.22)

"Marx makes reference to the 'contradiction between the production and realization of which capital, by its concept, is the unity'. This reference to the concept of capital reminds us that he analyzes capital as an object of knowledge, a concept, and that is why he is able to talk about contradictions of capital. Contradictions can exist only within language. If he were treating capital as a thing in the world, he could only report on his observations which he might formulate in terms of class conflict, but the word 'contradiction' would make no sense" (p. 198).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This cannot be right:


"A contradiction occurs when a term refers to two mutually exclusive things, A and not-A".

This half confuses the exclusive 'or' with contradictions!

Contradiction has nothing to do with 'mutual exclusivity'. In its simplest form it is merely the conjunction of a proposition (or clause) with its negation.

[This is quite apart from the fact that if a 'term' refers, it must be a name, or other singular designating expression, and so cannot contradict anything!]

It is no surprise therefore that Balogh then proceeds to mangle Marx.

[DeLeonist]

I think a distinction can be made between "contradiction" as used in the pratice of formal logic, and as a description of a term (eg 'capital' in the example in the previous post) which in pragmatic usage embodies mutually exclusive concepts.

Guy Robinson, whom you recommended, also speaks of the 'contradictions' of bourgeois ideology.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


I think a distinction can be made between "contradiction" as used in the pratice of formal logic, and as a description of a term (eg 'capital' in the example in the previous post) which in pragmatic usage embodies mutually exclusive concepts.

In that case, what is this new sense?

I keep asking, and have been doing so now for 25 years, and have still to receive an adequate or even a clear reply.


Guy Robinson, whom you recommended, also speaks of the 'contradictions' of bourgeois ideology

Well, that is no more controversial than when we say that there are contradictions in a police officer's evidence.

And we do not need an ounce of 'dialectics' to come to that conclusion, either.

[DJFreiheit]

In its simplest form it is merely the conjunction of a proposition (or clause) with its negation.


Can I use this quote to explain what contradiction means please?

[DeLeonist]

In her defence Bologh might say, for example, that if we analysed and itemised the meaning of the concept 'capital' we would find that it included the statements 'capital is value' and 'capital is not value'. Hence, the concept is contradictory in the same way that a policeman's statement of evidence can be. The contradiction is in language and the meaning of the concept, not in material processes as the diamats would have it.

So I still have some trouble distinguishing Bologh's supposedly mangled approach from Robinson's. But maybe the dialectical verbiage does just add an unnecessary layer of confusion that is absent from Robinson.

Anyway, I've decided to get some more background on Wittgenstein before seriously trying to decipher Bologh and have just picked up AJ Ayer's book on him (not my preferred choice but all they had at the local library).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


In her defence Bologh might say, for example, that if we analysed and itemised the meaning of the concept 'capital' we would find that it included the statements 'capital is value' and 'capital is not value'. Hence, the concept is contradictory in the same way that a policeman's statement of evidence can be. The contradiction is in language and the meaning of the concept, not in material processes as the diamats would have it.

First of all, this would not conform to her 'definition', and second, with a policeman's alleged contradictory evidence, both halves of it cannot be true. This is not so with the example you give. Dialecticians want to say both halves are true. In that case, they cannot be contradictory.

But even then, we would want to know what the clause "Capital is value" means -- for there might be a concealed equivocation here, as in the following example:

Someone says they have put their money in the bank and they have not put it in the bank. This looks contradictory until we discover that the first word means an institution of corporate extortion, and the second the side of a river.

So, unless you tell us more, this is no contradiction.


Anyway, I've decided to get some more background on Wittgenstein before seriously trying to decipher Bologh and have just picked up AJ Ayer's book on him (not my preferred choice but all they had at the local library).

Perhaps the worst book on Wittgenstein you could have borrowed. Throw it away!

[DeLeonist]

Thanks for the tip re Ayer.

Re:


Dialecticians want to say both halves are true. In that case, they cannot be contradictory.

Bologh talks of repression of ‘forgetting’ allowing a contradictory form to persist. At one ‘moment’ a statement may be regarded as true and at another moment this is repressed. So I assume the contradiction is not in relation to whether a state of affairs is or is not in fact the case, but that at different times different things are regarded as true which could not be true together.


Eg capital presupposes labour as use value , but cannot acknowledge this as if it did so the fact of exploitation would be laid bare (as if capital really treated labour as use value it would exchange an equivalent of exchange value that labour produces).

What I find confusing is Bologh’s quasi-Hegelian characterisation of concepts as if they had a life of their own eg: “Capital cannot know itself as a totality of use value and exchange value or it would know itself to be a contradiction”. I presume this is supposed to mean that the concept of Capital as employed under the capitalist ‘form of life’ has contradictory elements one or the other of which are repressed depending on the circumstances.

"Mutual antagonism" would also maybe be a less misleading term than "contradiction".

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


Bologh talks of repression of ‘forgetting’ allowing a contradictory form to persist. At one ‘moment’ a statement may be regarded as true and at another moment this is repressed. So I assume the contradiction is not in relation to whether a state of affairs is or is not in fact the case, but that at different times different things are regarded as true which could not be true together.

But, even then, both halves are held true (possibly at different times).

And yet, if they aren't, how is this different from changing one's mind? And if that is so, then the ones uttering these clauses (if any are -- have we any examples of anyone doing this?) are not holding to a contradiction.


Eg capital presupposes labour as use value , but cannot acknowledge this as if it did so the fact of exploitation would be laid bare (as if capital really treated labour as use value it would exchange an equivalent of exchange value that labour produces).

But this it to attribute to the capitalists an insight into the system that only historical materialsim can deliver. Are we to assume then that the capitalists also accept historical materialism, or that they invented this theory before Marx did?

If not, then what does this mean?

On the other hand, if they do not assent to this consciously, then it cannot form part of a contradiction that they hold.

And that is quite apart from the question of equivocation which I raised earlier.

[I'd give up if I were you; there is no way out of this Hermetic corner.]


"Mutual antagonism" would also maybe be a less misleading term than "contradiction".

Not really, since this anthropomorphises either the concepts we use or propositions we employ to express them.

There is no future for this word ('contradiction') in the way it has been traditionally used. Comrades should stop trying to breath life into this cadaver.

[DeLeonist]

I suppose Bologh might say that the "contradictory" meanings of a concept are not consciously held by specific capitalists, but are implicit in the way concepts are used, and it takes Marxist analysis to make the "contradictions" explicit.

But I certainly don't have any dogmatic allegiance to a word, so it wouldn't worry me if it was excised from the revolutionary vocabulary for the reasons you've mentioned.

In fact at the level of revolutionary struggle and workers' consciousness (which of course is the level that really counts), I think excision of the "C-word" would help diminish the quietism that accompanies the view that the collapse of capitalism is some sort of logical inevitability.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


I suppose Bologh might say that the "contradictory" meanings of a concept are not consciously held by specific capitalists, but are implicit in the way concepts are used, and it takes Marxist analysis to make the "contradictions" explicit.

But, how would this be different from making manifest an equivocation here? Indeed, how would this be different from a change of mind on their behalf?

And how do we know they hold both of these true at the same time? Did Balogh do a survey to check?

Moreover, when confronted with an alleged contradiction in our beliefs, we often abandon one half. In that case, if these capitalists were confronted with this alleged 'contradiction', how do we know they might not say "Ok, in that case I/we believe capital is value; sorry for the confusion".

Moreover, in your original attempt to explain this, you said:


In her defence Bologh might say, for example, that if we analysed and itemised the meaning of the concept 'capital' we would find that it included the statements 'capital is value' and 'capital is not value'.

But, these can't be 'statements' if they are imputed to capitalists; they'd only be that if the capitalists actually came out with these themselves.

[DeLeonist]

Rosa
Apologies for my imprecise terminology, but let me ask a couple of questions to clarify your objections:

1) Imagine a vast bureaucracy devoted to the production of objects of various classes. The meaning of terms and concepts used in the bureaucracy is given in rule books. The bureaucracy is broken up into various departments, which do not have perfect lines of communication with each other. The rule book of one Department has the rule “object A belongs to Class B” and “An object in class B cannot belong to class C“, whereas the rule book of another department states “Object A belongs to Class C”.

Do you agree that the definition or meaning of object A is contradictory? If not, how would you characterise it?

2) Now imagine a world where instead of always being written down in rule books, the meaning of terms and concepts is determined by customs, social usage, laws, economic factors, power relations and so forth.

Do you think that the meaning of terms and concepts used in this world (which is, of course, the actual world) could be contradictory in a way that is analogous to the situation in (1). If not, how would you characterise such situations?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


1) Imagine a vast bureaucracy devoted to the production of objects of various classes. The meaning of terms and concepts used in the bureaucracy is given in rule books. The bureaucracy is broken up into various departments, which do not have perfect lines of communication with each other. The rule book of one Department has the rule “object A belongs to Class B” and “An object in class B cannot belong to class C“, whereas the rule book of another department states “Object A belongs to Class C”.

Do you agree that the definition or meaning of object A is contradictory? If not, how would you characterise it?

These are inconsistent with each other, but not contradictory, since both could be false. Object A could belong to class D, and no other, making both these rules false. [A contradiction is such that both halves cannot be true and cannot be false.]

[Incidentally, I am waving the condition you imposed earlier, that it was 'statements' that were contradictory; these are rules, not statements. I am also waving aside your equivocation between rules, definitions and meanings.]


2) Now imagine a world where instead of always being written down in rule books, the meaning of terms and concepts is determined by customs, social usage, laws, economic factors, power relations and so forth.

Do you think that the meaning of terms and concepts used in this world (which is, of course, the actual world) could be contradictory in a way that is analogous to the situation in (1). If not, how would you characterise such situations?

Inconsistent, not contradictory. [There are other problems with this example, but we can leave those till later, or if you try to modify it.]

As I said earlier: give up, there is no way out of this Hermetic Hole.

[DeLeonist]

Don't know why I added that unnecessary complication. Change it to one deparment's rule stating "A belongs to Class B" and another's stating "A does not belong to Class B".

Even so, couldn't both contradictions and inconsistencies in these circumstances have objective, material consequences? The issue is not with whether a particular individual holds an inconsistent or contradictory belief, but the effect of inconsistent or contradictory concepts on objective processes.

Eg, the above example could end up with some produced A objects being lumped into class B and others being lumped into class C, which could then have implications for their allocation and distribution or whatever.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


Don't know why I added that unnecessary complication. Change it to one deparment's rule stating "A belongs to Class B" and another's stating "A does not belong to Class B".

These would both be false (or, better, of indeterminate truth value) if A does not exist. Hence they would neither be contradictories nor inconsistencies.

Keep going; I have plenty more objections.:lol:


Even so, couldn't both contradictions and inconsistencies in these circumstances have objective, material consequences? The issue is not with whether a particular individual holds an inconsistent or contradictory belief, but the effect of inconsistent or contradictory concepts on objective processes.

Not this way they can't.


Eg, the above example could end up with some produced A objects being lumped into class B and others being lumped into class C, which could then have implications for their allocation and distribution or whatever.

Then that would be a simple, correctible error.

[DeLeonist]

I'm not sure of what the relevance of the potential non-existence of A is, but I am satisfied that an administrator in this imaginary bureaucracy would be justified in saying; "the rule books say that A both does and does not belong to Class B - they contain a contradiction! ", though I see that an analytic philosopher may not feel so justified.


As far as Bologh's book goes, I think even if the c-word was replaced with "inconsistency" or such-like, her approach is still worth a look and could have relevance in analyzing and helping dismantle the "correctible error" which is capitalism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Deleonist:


I'm not sure of what the relevance of the potential non-existence of A is, but I am satisfied that an administrator in this imaginary bureaucracy would be justified in saying; "the rule books say that A both does and does not belong to Class B - they contain a contradiction! ", though I see that an analytic philosopher may not feel so justified.

If A does not exist, then there can be no truths (other than trivial ones) about A.

To give you an example.

W1: Woodruff Durfendorfer is over six feet tall.

But, this character does not exist, so this cannot be about him. [If anything, this is about an empty name, but names do not have heights. Inscriptions of names might, but names do not. Anyway, if is not about this character for there is no one for it to be about; so it can be neither true nor false.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_name

Hence:

W2: Woodruff Durfendorfer is not over six feet tall.

cannot contradict it, for both are neither true nor false.

So, once more, if A does not exist, then the 'statements/rules/definitions' you give cannot be about A, and so cannot contradict one another.


I'm not sure of what the relevance of the potential non-existence of A is, but I am satisfied that an administrator in this imaginary bureaucracy would be justified in saying; "the rule books say that A both does and does not belong to Class B - they contain a contradiction! ", though I see that an analytic philosopher may not feel so justified.

Anyway, this can't be a rule, since it is inapplicable. There is no way that this rule can be put into practice. If so, if can't be a contradictory rule, since it's not a rule to begin with.


As far as Bologh's book goes, I think even if the c-word was replaced with "inconsistency" or such-like, her approach is still worth a look and could have relevance in analyzing and helping dismantle the "correctible error" which is capitalism.

Yes, I have ordered a copy (I am surprised I did not already know about it!) -- even if only to add to my massive collection of books and articles on dialectics that contain risible attempts to come to grips with formal logic!