Rob,
Thanks for the welcome. Further comments below.
>>> Rob Schaap <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/07/99 04:41A
I reckon you sound like a good historical materialist in this post -
Welcome aboard!
You also write:
"Also, in the Preface to the First German edition he says that he treats
economics like natural history."
I'll take a tentative (somewhat vague) stab at this ... 'Economics' here is
that of capitalism - a dynamic mode of production which he reckons hides
its driving force behind our backs (the exchange relation). In that which
human consciousness does not enter (ie that which we do not perceive as we
live our lives), a natural science approach is tenable. His method is
revolutionary because it unmasks the hidden and thus makes us conscious of
it. Consciousness constitutes a systemic disruption to the giant clock.
Natural science gives you the OCC, the corresponding TRPTF, and the
tendency to periodic crises. Consciousness (arising where the once
conducive social relations suddenly fall out of kilter with whatever
developments the definitive drive for accumulation forces upon the mode)
manifests in stuff like superstructural ameliorations of the base (such as
the welfare state arising out of one such crisis), societal quakes (such as
your beloved Bolshies arising out of another), and the spectre of
democratic socialist transformation (well, we'll see).
((((((((((((((
Charles: Yes, this "natural science" quip from Karl made me think and develop my
thought the last time we discussed this on Thaxis, and I reached a conclusion much
like what you say above and below. I'd say the fetishism of commodities, reversal of
subject and object, or objectification of the working masses is a step toward solving
the riddle. Basically, the working masses are object-like when alienated or reified.
So, everything happens AS IF it were a natural scientific/historical process with
objective laws. As long as people are like objects and objects are like subjects,
things move mechancially or like a giant clock and according to objective laws. But
as you say, a major step in dereifying people is to make them conscious that they are
reified. This is what Marx aims toward and why he describes the natural
historical-like process of human society in its unconscious state. The contradictions
and crises of the clocklike natural history-like process help to prick the unc!
!
onscious state, and Marxists must be there to make those pricks of unconsciousness
grow into consciousness. (but it is getting tough, because the bourgeoisie have
learned all of this we are discussing too, and they are right there to anesthatize
those pricks from crises and contradictions of the clocklike system; and the
bourgeosie have many more resources than we Marxists).
(((((((((((((((
It's when (inevitably present) social relations are factored into the
clockwork of (inevitably impossible) pristine capitalist economics that we
arrive at the 'materialist conception of history'. History needs human
society. Capitalism in its abstracted self (and it is capitalism that is
the subject in *Das Kapital*), is a finite dynamic - its historical context
and the concomitant question of what might succeed it - are matters outside
that neat natural scientific box. History is social, and it is this
dimension that reduces the apparently natural and everlasting to an episode
of becoming and begoing (well, it *should* be a word!).
"Also, the last time we discussed this, Chris Burford found many examples
of Marx using natural science dialectics as heuristics in Capital to
explain human historical dialectics."
I've been using Gould's 'punctuated equilibrium' notion as a heuristic,
too. And the processes of the San Andreas fault. And the dynamics of an
arm wrestle. In none of these cases do I feel the need to demand identity
with my object (social history), 'coz that's not what 'heuristic' means.
((((((((((
Charles: Yes, there is in the end a qualitative difference between the movement of
human society and that of natural historical phenomena, but human society is more of a
cross between natural history and human history as long as humans treat themselves
like objects and objects like subjects.
I heard a television program on the science of plate tectonics, the history of that
science , etc. I cannot remember the exact chain of reasoning, but it struck me that
plate tectonics moved the science of earthquakes and geology in a dialectical
direction from the previous explanations. There are long periods of gradual shift and
then a leap.
You know Engels said that philosophy would come to an end and all that would be left
of it would be formal logic and dialectics ( as well as the positive scientific
disciplines). When one thinks about it, formal logic is both profound and trivial.
The main principle of formal logic is identity or "A is A". That is both profound and
trivial. What I am getting at is that dialectics has the same quality in a way. It is
both trivial and profound that everything changes. The obviousness of dialectics on
one level, does not make it important. And just like formal logic, it does not
substitute for the other elements of research and review of concrete evidence that are
part of scientific work, but also just like formal logic, scientific work stays within
the limits of dialectial logic without being confined only to dialectical logic.
Dialectical logic is not proposed as some machine for churning out natural scientific
results, but fundamental principles that recur as part of every p!
!
rocess in a different form as do the principles of formal logic.
Cheerio,
Charles
That lot may not all make sense - and I wouldn't blame you if it didn't.
But a bloke can but have a go.
Cheers,
Rob.
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