Discussion: Introduction (Notebook M)

I just wanted to establish the group, so whoever wanted to post the first comment is more than welcomed to and I hope that it will be more of a collective effort in that sense. That said, I'm glad you went ahead. I've also started a new job, so that will limit my participation, but will make comments when I can.

So one thing I wanted to point out is that whenever Marx, particularly in the Grundrisse, uses the word "realisation" (Nicolaus's choice rather than Marx's) the German is in in fact "valorisation". Why does this matter? Because "Realisation" points to a "moment" while valorisation is more in line with a definitive which denotes a "process".

So Marx is also making a point about political economy and the categories it relies on which assume a transhistorical (I wouldn't say "ahistorical" as that would mean that they in fact have no history at all, but I think Marx is trying to say that they, from the standpoint of bourgeois society, appear as eternal as thus have always existed) nature, i.e, Robinson Crusoe.

The thing I would note also is the "employment" of dialectical methodology, which the text seems to be dripping with, especially when Marx talks about the relations between production, distribution, exchange and consumption. Here's one quote which I think helped me to under the totality of these relations a bit better (Nicolaus, 89):

Production creates the objects which correspond to the given needs; distribution divides them up according to social laws; exchange further parcels out the already divided shares in accord with individual needs; and finally, in consumption, the product steps outside this social movement and becomes a direct object and servant of individual need, and satisfies it in being consumed [...] The person objectifies himself in production, the thing subjectifies itself in the person; in in distribution, society mediates between production and consumption in the form of general, dominant determinants; in exchange the two are mediated by the chance characteristics of the individual.

I actually think this section both illuminates what Marx means by the convergence of subject and object in the philosophical sense, but I might be jumping the gun a big/have Volume I stuck in my head because this is how I've translated it mentally (what do you think?):

For the person (assume productive worker in the material sense) s/he expends labour into a product, or objectifies their labour, and, in turn, the product becomes a reflection of the subjective labour of the individual, i.e., concrete labour.

Too far of a stretch? What do you all think of this passage?

EDIT: Sorry, not categories of political economy. i.e., rent, wages, profit, etc., but rather the more general acts of production, distribution et al which political economy grasps in a certain manner.

Zanthorous, I don't think it was semantic quibbling in the slightest as it's a reading group, I think it's important to flesh out these terms in detail.

Lyev, thanks for explaining totality. Perhaps it was a poor choice of words on my part, but I mean that prior to Marx, subject and object in philosophy had remained separate, and in the Grundrisse (as you are right to point out in his other texts) it seems quite obvious of their interconnectedness.

My concern, however, is to what extent the passage I had mentioned earlier forms some sort of basis for subjective labour of the objected worked on, and that of the objective character of the labour itself which is common in all commodities. I hope that was clear.

Perhaps it was a poor choice of words on my part, but I mean that prior to Marx, subject and object in philosophy had remained separate, and in the Grundrisse (as you are right to point out in his other texts) it seems quite obvious of their interconnectedness.

Well, one could say that idealism at least attempted to reconcile subject and object, and posit them in a distinct unity (in fact, generally materialism was associated with the point of view of the 'thing-in-itself', the separation of subject and object where the subject may get only subjective impressions of the object, in other words mechanical materialism). On the other hand, it was an important point of Marx's in the 1844 manuscripts that idealism in fact attempts to do this only through positing the human subject as asocial and inactive, as purely self-consciousness, and hence ultimately only reconciles subject and object through positing an absolute subject, i.e. God, standing above both nature and man.

Marx was, in a sense, attempting to solve the same problem materialistically, through taking humanity in sensuous practice and interaction with the objective world; insofar as we begin from man as the Cartesian 'I', the thinker who knows his own existence, the fact that subject and object are clearly not separate may only be reconciled through positing the objective world as the product of thought, and, as we are simply particular and limited subjects within the world, through positing the world as the self-alienating thought of God. On the other hand, this concept of self-alienation, of objectifying oneself, is central to Marx's analysis, and is also quite clear in the later Engels' writings on knowledge, freedom and so on. In Marx's views, however, this takes place in objective action, in real, social subjects interacting with the world, and by the same act creating and returning to themselves; labour, for example, is the free and conscious self-creation of humanity. A similar point exists in the theories of Marx and Engels when it comes to knowledge (the unity of the subjective and objective), which for Engels is strongly entwined with the notion of freedom, and hence also of necessity; in other words, knowledge as existing practically. The reality of a person's thought is a practical question, etc.

Of course, the abstract, asocial individual which forms the starting point of idealism also forms the starting-point of capitalism. Abolish the idea of God, and God will still reign on Earth. Funnily enough, Marx's comparisons of religion and the state (as 'heavenly, illusory communal existence', and as the alienated human essence), would seem to lead to the conclusion that the state, at least in its ideological, apparent aspect, is the opium of the people. It's somewhat ironic that Marx has gone down in history as a 'state-worshipper', then.

You could probably find similar themes in Wittgenstein's PI, as well as a conception of the relationship of the mental and physical which can probably be paralleled with Hegel's in some ways (although the later Wittgenstein was not an idealist, and the similarity is rather the transcending of both one-sided behaviourism and dualist Cartesianism through the positive, dialectical unity of mental and physical, essence and existence. Behaviourism in its philosophical sense of the rejection of the mental for behaviour is really not that different from Cartesianism, as it simply takes the Cartesian separation as given and rejects one half of it).

Zanthorous

Heh, you're doing it too.

However, there is a passage concerning the individual’s relation to their product contained in the text which seems to cover some of the themes you mention (p. 94)*; it might be of interest to you:

This quote is also reminiscent of the formulations of the same point in the 1844 manuscripts. Incidentally, one formulation there which may be worth looking at is this one:

"This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species."

There you have it, communism is dialectical mysticism.

Incidentally, while I won't elaborate on this here, it's worth noting that Marx's comments on production are very interesting here, insofar as they essentially seem to constitute an extension of Wittgenstein's views to the field of production (and do this in a way quite similar to Socrates, who said something similar in 'The Republic' about producers only producing with opinion of the form which may only become knowledge through the consumer, which incidentally also hints that the significance of the forms for him in 'The Republic' may well be more complex and practical than usually supposed). Essentially, for production to be conscious production, it must have an aim, which is ideal; we must have a concept of what we wish to produce, one could say. However, objects are incorporated into us as concepts only in practice, through their role and use in social forms of life (compare this to Wittgenstein's concept of aspect-seeing. How are we able to see a book, for example, or a door simply as a length? Because we are practically able to treat objects as lengths, and hence are inducted into this language-game), and hence through consumption. As such, the aim of production is itself given content by consumption, in other words by use. Production therefore contains consumption, its opposite moment, as a part of its own nature which gives it definition; consumption gives content to the ideal which production works towards.

My question is: How to explain the individuation appearing at at time of the highest social development?

Well, that really depends upon which 'individuation' you are talking about. On the one hand, there's the form of individuation which communism seeks to extend, the formation of the individual, conscious subject with subjective powers, which is only possible within society. This forms because an individual's own essential powers are not only individual, but also social; this should be quite clear in collective labour, for example, where an individual's productive power is essentially social, and one cannot make a division between collective and individual powers per se. However, in actual fact it's inherent to essential powers in general, as Marx notes when commenting that production by a pre-social person is just as nonsensical as language-use by the same. The human essence is the ensemble of social relations.

In socialism, this would only be extended, through the abolition of the division of labour and hence freeing of the individual from subjugation to an alien society, so that their own essential powers are developed freely and many-sidedly, rather than becoming a one-sided servant of the social need. Society is not separable from individuals, after all, although neither is it reducible to them (it is distinct, but also in unity.)

On the other hand, if you are referring to bourgeois society, that would be because it heralds the most complete development of class society, through the internalization of the contradictions inherent to it. While previously the labour performed some labour for themselves and some for, for example, feudal lords, the former being private and the latter social, in capitalism all labour is both private and social, and it is precisely because of this that all labour performed is alienated. Capitalism represents the internalization of this relation precisely because private property now becomes the rule of labour over itself (and hence it is quite fitting to a time in which the means of production are primarily products of labour), or, as Marx put it in the 1844 manuscripts:

"Just as Luther recognised religion – faith – as the substance of the external world and in consequence stood opposed to Catholic paganism – just as he superseded external religiosity by making religiosity the inner substance of man – just as he negated the priests outside the layman because he transplanted the priest into laymen's hearts, just so with wealth: wealth as something outside man and independent of him, and therefore as something to be maintained and asserted only in an external fashion, is done away with; that is, this external, mindless objectivity of wealth is done away with, with private property being incorporated in man himself and with man himself being recognised as its essence. But as a result man is brought within the orbit of private property, just as with Luther he is brought within the orbit of religion. Under the semblance of recognising man, the political economy whose principle is labour rather carries to its logical conclusion the denial of man, since man himself no longer stands in an external relation of tension to the external substance of private property, but has himself become this tense essence of private property."

While previously class rule and private property took the form of something external to labour, as Marx observes quite explicitly of rent in the same text, in capitalism private property, capital, is itself labour, and hence the fact that private property is the product of alienated labour is finally realized in practice. While previously class took the form of personal hierarchy, for example through the state, and hence the abstract individual of bourgeois civil society did not yet exist, in capitalism private property becomes in reality labour's rule over itself, and hence we have the atomized individual of capitalism precisely because class rule now becomes not the rule of people, in other words direct, personal hierarchy, but rather the rule of things, and hence social relationships become reduced to material relationships rather than direct rule. If he who has the gold rules, then gold rules. This means, of course, the abstract individual. Of course, the abstract individual, the individual facing society as something alien, is inherent to class society in general, insofar as all labour in class societies involves alienation of society, but because capitalism is the most fully developed form of the same, it also involves the most complete formation of the abstract individual as its starting-point.

As an aside, this internalization finds its final consummation within the sphere of capital in the formation of both co-operatives and joint-stock companies, whereby labour becomes autonomous from the previous 'working', industrial capitalist, and hence in fact capital is reduced completely to labour's rule over itself. On the one side, credit and such strengthen capital by allowing the tendency towards prices of production to be realized and allowing larger enterprises, on the other hand they herald its superfluity, just as capitalism itself, with the most developed internalization of the contradictions of class societies, heralds their own end in communist revolution.

I understand what you mean now as regards dialectics; a dialectical approach posits the subject-object relationship as a unity, whereas in all bourgeois thought hitherto, there is an antagonism between them

Yes, more or less. Dialectics is a necessary factor of human practice, which consists precisely of the manifestation of freedom through natural necessity (Marx is quite clear about this in the Capital chapter on the simple labour process, for example), the subject's objectification (ie. action) and the consequent existence of the object for the subject, and so on. Whereas idealism points out that objects can only exist for man insofar as his perception allows them to see them, and hence deduces that the world is simply mental, Marx holds that rather the world only exists for man insofar as he objectifies himself practically, through action.

Marx does not deny that the objective is subjective, that is, that the world only exists for man as an object insofar as it confirms his own essential powers, but simply reformulates these powers as not powers of thought or perception in the abstract, but rather elements of social and practical life. Man establishes the reality of his thought through action, and hence subjective knowledge, by which the object becomes an object for him in practice (ie. because he is able to act upon it in accordance with his will), is itself a product of objectification. The subjectification of the object, in this case the knowledge and comprehension of it, contains within its nature the power to act upon the object, in other words to subjectify oneself, as a necessary part of its own concept. Knowledge is not external to action, but rather contains it as a part of its defining nature (although it is not reducible to it). One could compare this with Wittgenstein's similar understanding of understanding, emotions and so on, the mental, as being inseparably connected with their forms of expression in behaviour, although not reducible to them. All things considered, it's quite blatantly dialectical; opposites contain each other as part of their own nature (eg. a thing's existence contains its finite character), and so on.

Capitalism contains latent oppositions between subject and object, the individual and society, production and consumption and so on, and hence contradicts the dialectical unity of them inherent to human practice. This comes to a head in crisis, where, as Marx once noted, the unity of categories inseparable in human practice is asserted through their absolute divorce. The workers find themselves suffering precisely as a result of these separations inherent to the capitalist appropriation process (the separations become palpable, and, as Hegel said, 'The feeling of separation is need'), and hence are forced to bridge the divorce by instituting themselves, as individuals, as the state and expropriating the expropriators, uniting themselves with their objects. As Marx commented, "But do not all rebellions without exception have their roots in the disasterous isolation of man from the community? Does not every rebellion necessarily presuppose isolation? Would the revolution of 1789 have taken place if French citizens had not felt disasterously isolated from the community? The abolition of this isolation was its very purpose."

Hence, on the one hand, the unity of the individual with society in materialism, that is, the reclamation of the human essence, must be carried out in practice, where this unity does not yet exist. As such, the standpoint of materialism is the standpoint of socialism. On the other hand, capitalism is itself a human society, and hence the divisions inherent to it come into contradiction with its basis in human practice and the labour process, and must be abolished. This could be referred to as the realization of materialism (Marx refers to it as the realization of philosophy in the 1844 manuscripts), although it must be realized that materialism itself arises from human practice, rather than human practice being simply the realization of a pre-existing idea. This is also what Marx says gives communism its 'reality', with a phrasing interestingly reminiscent of Hegel where he rejects the reliance of other socialist theorists on past socialist societies to establish communism's possibility.

Yet in this instance the subject is objectified, and the object has been subjectified.

Technically, when Marx refers to the objectification of the subject and subjectification of the object, he's not referring to the capitalist inversion, but rather the mutually necessary dialectical process. He does something similar when referring to how objects must be made human in the 1844 manuscripts. In this case it's quite similar to his comments on how self-alienation and objectification, the subject's acting upon the world according to its own laws and for its own sake, creating an object in accordance with a given concept and hence externalizing it, constitutes at the same time appropriation; one could also compare this to the later Engels on freedom and necessity, or the production-consumption thing here. In idealism, God necessarily alienates his own thoughts in the form of the world; in materialism, man alienates his subjective thoughts in labour and hence appropriates the world (as production entails consumption; in capitalism their separation occurs via the mediation of capital, and hence we have the possibility of overproduction). On the other hand, in capitalism the two moments are divided, and hence the alienation of the labourer creates the need for the appropriation by capital on the other end. The object is alien to the subject, and hence must go elsewhere, and hence private property arises as a consequence of alienated labour (not the other way around, as Marx noted in the 1844 manuscripts).

It is maybe why the political economists, as members of capitalist society, had such a topsy-turvy view of the world because clearly they were part of these same transactions in the marketplace too.

Yeah, sure, their universal panacea was, after all, an isolated individual interacting only with things.

Although, you talk about concrete labour as subjective, yet I would have thought that concrete labour is objective seeing as it is reflected in the use-value of a commodity, whereas abstract labour is reflected in the exchange-value which I would say is the more subjective element.

Well, I think that the main point is that value is objectified, because labour is carried out as private labour, but its product is not a private use-value, and hence the labour must be carried out onto the market in order to be realized as private labour. As such, it becomes objectified, or congealed, in the object, which then itself becomes the subject upon the market, while its owner takes the part of simply its functionary. This is, as Marx notes, simply labour itself dominating the labourers.

The unity of the "moments" of production and consumption seem to be fairly straightforward. Productive consumption, and vice versa.

Marx doesn't seem to see this (ie. productive consumption and consumptive production) as the only form of unity between the two, as one can see when he describes the three developments of the relationship of production and consumption:

(1) Immediate identity: Production is consumption, consumption is production. Consumptive production. Productive consumption. The political economists call both productive consumption. But then make a further distinction. The first figures as reproduction, the second as productive consumption. All investigations into the first concern productive or unproductive labour; investigations into the second concern productive or non-productive consumption.

(2) [In the sense] that one appears as a means for the other, is mediated by the other: this is expressed as their mutual dependence; a movement which relates them to one another, makes them appear indispensable to one another, but still leaves them external to each other. Production creates the material, as external object, for consumption; consumption creates the need, as internal object, as aim, for production. Without production no consumption; without consumption no production. [This identity] figures in economics in many different forms.

(3) Not only is production immediately consumption and consumption immediately production, not only is production a means for consumption and consumption the aim of production, i.e. each supplies the other with its object (production supplying the external object of consumption, consumption the conceived object of production); but also, each of them, apart from being immediately the other, and apart from mediating the other, in addition to this creates the other in completing itself, and creates itself as the other. Consumption accomplishes the act of production only in completing the product as product by dissolving it, by consuming its independently material form, by raising the inclination developed in the first act of production, through the need for repetition, to its finished form; it is thus not only the concluding act in which the product becomes product, but also that in which the producer becomes producer. On the other side, production produces consumption by creating the specific manner of consumption; and, further, by creating the stimulus of consumption, the ability to consume, as a need.

Incidentally, I'll be working on a piece elsewhere relating Marx's conception of the unity of exchange and production to his treatment of the value-form in Capital, a section which has quite possibly confused a fair few people used to the divided conception of exchange and production conventional in economics. I'll try to link to that here when it's done.

Subject into object, object into subject.

This is valid, although it's worth noting that the object is itself subjectified, and hence represents a manifestation of the subject's own essential powers and exists for the subject in this form, so that in consuming it the subject simply returns to themselves through the object. Hence, we have free self-creation. A similar conception, namely of the object existing for the subject as a manifestation of the subject's own essential (ie. subjective) powers, is also prevalent in the unity of subject and object present in Marx's discussions of both knowledge and aesthetics.

However, even here it is worth noting that the subject does not exist independently of their objectification, just as the object cannot be an object for them unless it is comprehended and absorbed into thought, subjectified. Action is, therefore, quite literally self-creation, and subjective life is inherently in motion. Self-alienation is self-confirmation. Likewise, the proletariat, in their labour, create themselves as proletarians, through alienating their own essential powers (it's interesting that one can find quite a few parallels between the 'later' Marx's concept of labour-power and the earlier one's discussion of essential powers). Their productive power becomes the productive power of capital.

In idealism, man is alienated from his object, and this is only nominally solved by making the object, as well as the subject's powers as subject, into simply a manifestation of god. This in actual fact represents the alienation of their essential powers, and in this sense Feuerbach was correct to identify God with alienated humanity. However, what he didn't grasp was that the human, subjective essence is, far from the Cartesian 'I', the ensemble of social relations, society. As such, the alienation of our essential powers, as it were alienation of ourselves (here not simply as a moment alongside appropriation, but rather absolute, faced on the other side by the appropriation of capital), is coupled necessarily with not only the alienation of our products, hence of our object, but also of society.

While I was in a discussion with Zanthorus recently, he also mentioned that the subjectivity-objectivity division also comes up in many other subjects, such as psychology. One could also add ethics to this, with the conflict between 'subjective' and 'objective' ethics (ultimately, 'objective ethics', in the sense of rights, moral laws and so on, are inherently religious, i.e. idealistic, just as the establishment of the external world for the abstract individual requires the invocation of God. Elsewise, it relapses into simply 'This is an objective moral law because I say so', in which case it's apparently moral because one pulls it out of one's arse, so that it descends into 'subjective ethics', in a similar manner to how idealism reduces mechanical materialism, with some validity, to the proposition that we can only know appearances. Marxism is not concerned with moral laws about man in the abstract, but rather with the real, concrete interests of real, social individuals. In a way it is closest to Aristotle, the Socrates of 'The Republic' and that lot. Ethics is objective, but it is also subjective, just like beauty for example.)

In a sense, Marx abolished the conventional distinctions between 'objective' science, the 'soft sciences' and 'subjective' ethics, just as Socrates did before him with his analogy of the form of the good illuminating the rest, by putting forward teleological action as the basis of human thought and knowledge. In fact, he associated the 'abstractly objective' character of the sciences under capitalism with idealism. Scientism is mysticism, what do you know.

Incidentally, so as not to continue the thread of half-explained views which will probably only be understood somewhat by people who have read the 1844 manuscripts, I suppose I'll include a few comments on the text. Firstly, notice the rather interestingly Hegelian phrasing in this section:

The conclusion we reach is not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity. Production predominates not only over itself, in the antithetical definition of production, but over the other moments as well. The process always returns to production to begin anew. That exchange and consumption cannot be predominant is self-evident. Likewise, distribution as distribution of products; while as distribution of the agents of production it is itself a moment of production. A definite production thus determines a definite consumption, distribution and exchange as well as definite relations between these different moments. Admittedly, however, in its one-sided form, production is itself determined by the other moments.

For example, the contrast between the 'antithetical' definition of production (presumably that in which its antithetical moments are incorporated within it) and the 'one-sided form', the latter being a term quite similar to the language of the later Engels. One can also see the dialectical relationship of continuity and discreteness, unity and distinction, as developed earlier by Hegel, for example in his account of Zeno. The reproduction process is divisible, but it is also indivisible. This is also whence the conception of motion in terms of both being in a position and not being in it originates (as opposed to the logician's paradise of Zeno's arrow paradox, where an arrow is where it is, and that is all; of course, no motion is possible, because one has simply a succession of discrete, timeless moments in which the arrow is where it is, and hence time itself appears as something rather mysterious. 'The arrow is here in this moment, then here in this moment, etc.', but of course these moments are not really temporal, and one can hardly get time by adding together timeless moments (0 seconds + 0 seconds = 0 seconds)). Marx and Engels seem to have taken it as their task to make dialectics materialist through replacing its idealistic form in Hegel with a conception of them as a reflection of sensuous human practice, where they found its home in labour, with its relation between freedom and necessity (a metaphysical, Zeno-time approach is quite unable to give any concept of necessity, as Wittgenstein noted quite clearly in the Tractatus), subject and object, and so on.

I'll get to the discussion of research going from the concrete to the abstract later, since that probably deserves its own discussion. However, Marx's notes on the concept of 'labour as such' are quite interesting in their connection of capitalism and its abstract labour with the abolition of the division of labour. Of course, Marx also observes elsewhere that the form of abstract labour under capitalism is essentially akin to that of the concept in idealism, which is manifested in various particular objects. Hence, we seem to have a further development of Marx's comparison of capitalism to idealism, as had been present from his early critiques of Hegel's philosophy of the state, as well as the aforementioned view of capitalism as essentially akin to idealism in beginning from the abstract man and then attempting to reconcile the separation of subject and object through incorporating both subject and object into God/capital as the supreme subject. In that case, for Marx, idealism must be superceded in practice, not simply in theory.

Socialism does not seek to abolish the concept of labour in the abstract, but rather to rob it of its mystical form; in capitalism, there is inherently a contradiction between the abstract and concrete, between value and use-value, abstract and concrete labour, and hence only in communism are concrete and abstract reconciled, so that abstraction ceases to rule over man.

Marx associated the abstract with man's own essential powers, with representing man's own ability to act freely upon the world (for example, to treat an object, such as a ruler, as a length; having the concept of length and the power to treat an object as a length are not separate, and here again subjectivity and objectivity are not opposed, but in unity. The object becomes an object for the subject in its aspect as a length. The subjectification of the object contains as a defining part of itself the objectification of the subject), the appropriation of the world into his mind and at the same time the creation of the world as an object for him. However, in idealism, the abstract rules over the existent, as manifested ultimately in God (just as capital is ultimately just abstract labour), and hence man's own powers take the form of God. Conversely, in communism, 'abstract labour' no longer exists in the same form as in capitalism, as one side of the labour process in opposition to concrete, useful labour; rather, it represents the formation of on the one hand the individual not confined strictly to a single field of labour, reduced to a crippled slave of society, and on the other hand the ability of society to consciously distribute labour.

Likewise, value can only exist in its opposition to use-value and in the absence of this self-rule of society. Abstract labour under capitalism is not simply a mental abstraction, but a practical one, as Lucio Colletti was right to point out. Value may itself seem bizarre, but in reality it is only as bizarre as the notion of effective demand; people communicate, value things and so on only through the voices of their commodities in their own, private conversations, hence only through their labour in crystallized form. Value exists only where society appears alien to the individual, but where nonetheless the individual is dependent upon the distribution of the social labour, and can only communicate his private, individual desires through social labour.

Something interesting here is Marx's reference to prior, non-practical materialism as 'naturalistic materialism', a phrase which may be elucidated by this statement of Engels:

“Natural science, like philosophy, has hitherto entirely neglected the in influence of activity on their thought; both know only nature on the one hand and thought on the other. But it is precisely the alteration of nature by men, not solely nature as such, which is most essential and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change nature that his intelligence has increased. The naturalistic conception of history, as found, for instance to a greater or lesser extent in Draper and other scientists, as if nature exclusively reacts on man, and natural conditions everywhere exclusively determined his historical development, is therefore one-sided and forgets that man also reacts on nature, changing it and creating new conditions of existence for himself.”

Also interesting in this introduction is Marx's comment, presumably on art, that, "This conception appears as necessary development. But legitimation of chance. How. (Of freedom also, among other things.) (Influence of means of communication. World history has not always existed; history as world history a result.)" Compare:

"The evolution of a concept, or of a conceptual relation (positive and negative, cause and effect, substance and accidency) in the history of thought, is related to its development in the mind of the individual dialectician, just as the evolution of an organism in palaeontology is related to its development in embryology (or rather in history and in the single embryo). That this is so was first discovered for concepts by Hegel. In historical development, chance plays its part, which in dialectical thinking, as in the development of the embryo, is summed up in necessity."

The discussion of art is also quite interesting, although we will perhaps get to that later. To be brief, Marx essentially seems to be relating art and imagination to the reflection of human life, and hence the relationships between subject and object, humanity and nature, and so on present in practical life. This would seem to also involve a view of art as a form of expression, so that these specific relationships may only be expressed insofar as they reflect actual life; how the world appears in capitalism is different to how it would appear in primitive communism or feudalism. This would seem to imply a recognition of the subjective aspect of the world, the fact that it only exists as an object for one insofar as it confirms one's own essential powers, themselves varying with the development of society.

One may only express the world as it exists under feudalism when one has lived in such a society, as the mind and its conceptions are not separate from action; likewise, concepts such as the rights of man and subjective freedom took their most developed form only with the abstract man of bourgeois society. This could relate to Marx and Engels' comments about how man under socialism shall leave behind capitalism not only in practice, but also in thought. It would also seem to preclude a view of the artist as necessarily a social agitator or anything of the sort, rather conceiving art as a form of expression. This would seem in harmony with Engels' view that, "The more the opinions of the author remain hidden, the better for the work of art." Art does reflect the world, but not through being hidden political polemic intended to convince people, but rather through in fact expressing the author's mind, which exists only within their relations to the world and society.

So yes, there you go. Sorry if that may have been a bit rambling at times, because at times it was a work of self-clarification as well as explanation, but hopefully it helps someone with something nonetheless. It may be unclear to you what I'm getting at at a few points, but then I'm a dedicated egoist and I don't care about your interests, parasite.

- A Marxist-Objectivist.

That's an interesting point. Marx comments that the result of human action is that the world comes to appear to man as a manifestation of his essential powers, and hence our prior action and forms of life take the form of perception. One could compare the way in which one may see a schematic cube as either a cube or lines, or see a triangle as either an illustration of a mountain, a wedge, a geometrical diagram, and so on. I think that to some degree it's similar to the stars, where we are able to gain knowledge about them as an extension of our previously existence knowledge originating practically, for example as regards absorption spectra, Doppler shifts and so on. This can be seen, for example, in how knowledge of the nuclear fusion process on stars closely followed the first fusion of hydrogen in earthly laboratories. One could compare it to an illustration by Wittgenstein, where students learn the concept of length using a ruler, and then by extension understand also the concept of the length from the Earth to the sun, even though this could not practically be measured by rulers. In other words, the initial, earthly and practical context anchors the celestial and gives it sense.

As such, the stars become subjectified as an extension of our earthly practice, as well as through direct interaction with them. I have to go for a while now, but I think that the above should be a sufficient description of things for now. Still, it was a good question and probably deserves further answer.

Is there anyone else who would like to voice a problem or question?