Steve,
Commentary interleaved with your commentary and citations. [note I do not
comment on every citation, some responses cover more than one citation].
Sorry, I've included very few citations here. I'm in the middle of writing
and somewhat pressed for time. Still the opportunity to try out the ideas in
the paper in this response is much appreciated.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Gabosch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx and
thethinkers he inspired" <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 4:16
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Victor,
I spent a little time reviewing Ilyenkov's article "The Concept of the
Ideal" (available on MIA ), and the notes I published on xmca about it
last year. Below, I have copied paragraphs 66 - 90 from EVI's
142-paragraph essay. I don't find your comments today about ideality and
materiality consistent with Ilyenkov's theory as I interpret it.
Even were I to somehow convince you of that, it still would not
necessarily make Bakhurst right, of course. I notice that one big problem
with Bakhurst's presentation in his chapter on the concept of the ideal is
he does not focus on or even mention how Ilyenkov's concept of the ideal
is a generalization of the labor theory of value to all human activity.
In fact, he does not mention the labor theory of value at all. As I think
about it, this avoidance of the most important argument by Ilyenkov
considerably weakens his presentation. But as I say, I don't think the
real issue is Bakhurst's comprehension of Ilyenkov's theory of the ideal.
I think the real issue is Ilyenkov's theory itself, whether it can flow
from the labor theory of value, and how does it apply.
As I see it, the key concept in this regard that Ilyenkov offers is that
just as Marx discovered how social relations can be "embodied" into things
in the form of commodities - through the incorporation of abstract labor
into the value-form - so too, Marxists can explain that social relations
are embodied in all cultural objects - through the incorporation of
meaningful cultural activity into the ideal form.
The social relations are not embodied in a particular coat or in a
particular bale of linen. These are material objects whose concreteness are
beyond the capacity of human conceptualisation. After all a particular
linen coat may have been made by an apprentice and taken twice as long to
produce than a similar coat made by a master tailor. The linen coats and
bales of linen cloth referred to by Marx are not actual material coats and
cloths but an abstract representation of them. And that's not all. Labour
value itself is not a description of physical and sensual labour activity
but of abstract labour. Labour from which all concrete relations have been
abstracted out but for labour time or the average time necessary to produce
a particular object. It does not take into account whether the labourer was
weakened by starvation, was preoccupied with whether he could pay next
months rent, or couldn't find whetstone to sharpen his scissors.
The 'thing' Marx is referring to is not the physical sensual thing as it
comes off the production line, but the abstract idea of the thing as it is
manifested in the consciousness of the labourer, his boss, the salesman who
sells it and the purchaser who buys it. A commodity is not a physical
sensual object but a concept of objects, objects abstracted into things to
be bought and sold and that's it.
Ilyenkov explains that plain materialists and idealists alike make the
error of viewing the boundary between the material and the ideal as being
the world of the inside versus that of the outside of each individual
human head. In contrast, he argues that according to dialectical
materialism, ideality and materiality must be distinguished in terms of
the composition of each object - both the composition of the physical
attributes, which of course are the sources of its materiality, and the
composition of its social origins and social context, which are the
sources of its ideality - just as Marx analyzed the composition of the
commodity. According to Ilyenkov's theory, objects within the human
cultural realm objectively possess both materiality and ideality, just as
commodities in a market economy possess both concrete and abstract labor,
possess both use-value and exchange-value.
This is not, by the way, Ilyenkov's invention, but the essence of Marx's
critique of Feuerbach in Ad Feuerbach and of Lenin's critique of Plekhanov
in the Conspectus. The boundary between ideal and real is objective,
external to the subjective consciousness of the individual.
So how do we account for the objectivity of the ideal if it is as an object
manifested only in subjective consciousness? That's the whole point of the
dialectical unity of the objective image in consciousness and the material
representation of this object in material symbolic expression of the ideal.
This is in essence the same dialectical unity that A. Blunden describes for
Vygotsky's concept of meaningful speech. That is, meaningful speech is a
unity of meaning which is significant yet immaterial and vocalisation which
is itself without significance, and it is the unity of the two that imparts
material form to meaning and significance to vocalisation. The ideal cannot
exist either as subjective imagery or as some material form, natural or
artificial, but only as a unity of both by which the subjective imagery is
given a material form and the material form (the sign or language) is given
significance (essence).
The key word regarding the ideal is 'representation'. The social
activities, be they production or social interaction, are embodied in the
socially assimilated but subjectively manifest representation of the
activities by their object, while the subjectively manifest object is
represented materially by conventional language forms. The social
objectivity of the subjective manifestation of the object in consciousness
is made possible by its embodiment in a language form that enables the
transmission of the ideal form (its manifestation in consciousness) between
individuals, communities, and sometimes even civilizations.
I think a close look at Ilyenkov is needed to proceed. Below are
paragraphs 66-90 (my numbering) from the 142-word essay. I realize this
is a lot of material, but it is a complex idea. Each paragraph is
preceded by some comments or headings by me. My annotations have an SG in
them and are preceded by "*****." The full article as at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/ideal/ideal.htm
Please note there are some scanning errors in this version and I strongly
suspect there are some translation errors in the printed edition, both of
which contribute much to making this already difficult article fairly
opaque to read. I annotated this important essay partially for my own
learning, and partially in the hope that it could become the basis of an
annotated edition of this essay at some point, which might help others
study and understand it.
- Steve
selections from Evald Ilyenkov "The Concept of the Ideal" (1977),
annotations by Steve Gabosch (SG):
___________________________________________________
66 - 69 Ideality in Use-Value and Exchange Value SG
*****[66. SG. Ideality in the form of exchange value consists in the
fact that a coat, for example, can be a form of expression of something
quite different, for example, linen. Their exchange values are mutually
represented.
66
According to Marx, the ideality of the form of value consists not, of
course, in the fact that this form represents a mental phenomenon existing
only in the brain of the commodity-owner or theoretician, but in the fact
that the corporeal palpable form of the thing (for example, a coat) is
only a form of expression of quite a different "thing" (linen, as a value)
with which it has nothing in common. The value of the linen is
*represented*, expressed, "embodied" in the form of a coat, and the form
of the coat is the "*ideal or represented* form" of the value of the
linen.
No real problem here if you realize that this corporeal coat is still not
this or that coat but a concept of a material coat that corresponds to any
number of palpably real coats and that it like a quantity of gold coins at a
more developed level of commercial exchange represents the concept of an
equivalent quantity [a qualification missing from this quote] material bale
of linen that corresponds to any number of palpable equivalent bales of
linen cloth. Clearly if the ideal form, no matter how abstract its
visualization in consciousness, must correspond to a physically sensual
condition if it is to be of practical use.
*****[67. SG. EVI presents a well-read quote by Marx.]
67
"As a use-value, the linen is something palpably different from the coat;
as value, it is the same as the coat, and now has the appearance of a
coat. Thus the linen acquires a value-form different from its physical
form. The fact that it is value, is made manifest by its equality with the
coat, just as the sheep's nature of a Christian is shown in his
resemblance to the Lamb of God." [Capital, Vol. I, p. 58.]
No problem here either. Marx's example is a demonstration of how ideality,
the objectification of activity emerges out of actual experience, in this
case the experience of primitive exchange of goods.
*****[68. SG. This ideal or represented form of value is a completely
objective relationship.]
Indeed it is, but objective is not coterminous with "material reality" it
also includes ideality which is in essence the objectivity of social
convention or of ethos.
In fact it is value that is ideal and not the coat or the linen, and
certainly not just any old coat or bale of linen. Value or price as ideal is
not in itself the materially objective relation between labour and the means
of production and the relations of production, but the idealization of the
customs of market exchange. The actual material relation between labour and
valuation is in the factory system of production and the commercialization
of the exchange of the means (including of human labour) and materia of
production necessary for productive activity in developed societies.
68
This is a completely objective relationship, within which the "bodily form
of commodity B becomes the value-form of commodity A, or the body of
commodity B acts as a mirror to the value of commodity A", [Capital, Vol.
I, p. 59.] the authorised representative of its "value" nature, of the
"substance" which is "embodied" both here and there.
*****[69. SG. The value-form is "ideal," it is something quite different
from the physical thing in which it is represented.]
It is also ideal because it is a representation of social convention.
69
This is why the form of value or value-form is *ideal*, that is to say, it
is something quite different from the palpable form of the thing in which
it is *represented*, expressed, "embodied", "alienated".
70 - 73 Is It Consciousness and Will That Is Being Represented? SG
*****[70.1 SG. What is being represented? Will? No. And now EVI makes
another of his central most important crucial essential points in this
article.
*****[70.2 SG. What is being represented is a definite *social
relationship between people* which before their eyes takes the form of a
*relationship between things*.
This whole discussion of how social relationships between people are
regarded as a relation between things follows quite naturally from the
principle that ideality takes the form of objectification of activity. It
doesn't really have much significance for the differences between us.
As to EVI's regard of will and consciousness as a product of ideality, I
couldn't agree with him more. What's more, the foundation of this argument
in the objective material needs for conscious coordination of activity in
direct cooperation of life forms that are capable of innovation in
adaptation to encountered material conditions is quite consistent with a
non-ideal understanding of the roots of ideality.
70
What is this "other", this difference, which is expressed or represented
here? People's consciousness? Their will? By no means. On the contrary,
both will and consciousness are determined by this objective ideal form,
and the thing that it expresses, "represents" is a definite social
relationship between people which in their eyes assumes the fantastic form
of a relationship between things.
The question here that EVI fails to specify here is the "relation between
which things." He does so at some great length in chapters 7 and 8 of
Dialectical Logic. The relation between things can take place at two
different levels; at the level of the ideal or in the form of idealism or at
the level of the symbol in which case we are dealing with fetishism.
The transformation of social relations between people into things at the
ideal level involves the reification of concepts such as value, abstract
labour, and the idea itself into autonomous powerful entities that interact
through the medium of human activity and produce other reified concepts such
as cultures, civilizations, and so on. The transformation of social
relations between people into things at the symbolic level involves the
regard of symbols such as money, the paycheck and linguistic forms as the
active forces of the social system. In both cases the transformation is
based on the restriction of knowledge to the extant customs and beliefs of
the tribe. Or, on a more sophisticated level, the conviction that human
knowledge is entirely circumscribed by social practice.
Bakhurst goes one further than the fantasia of idealism and fetishism. Even
idealists and fetishists restrict their identification of the things whose
relationships replace human activity to things in an abstract form, as
categories of objects. For Bakhurst the things that determine human
activity are the sensual material environment of human artefacts the actual
world of things made by man. Wow!
*****[71. SG. In commodity exchange, people's activity is materially
established in the form of a relationship between things. This occurs
regardless of conscious knowledge it is happening.
Understood.
71
In other words, what is "represented" here *as a thing is* the form of
people's activity, the form of life activity which they perform together,
which has taken shape "behind the back of consciousness" and is materially
established in the form of the relationship between things described
above.
*****[72. SG. The appearance of the value of one thing in the
physicality of another alone creates ideality.
Indeed, as I wrote earlier representation is the essence of ideality.
72
This and only this creates the ideality of such a "thing", its
sensuous-supersensuous character.
*****[73. SG. Here is where the ideal form stands in direct opposition
to individual consciousness as an external thing, not as itself, but in
the form of another equally palpable thing that expresses something
different from either thing. What is represented in these two things (the
coat and the linen in Marx's example) is human labor, the transformation
of nature by social humanity.]
73
Here ideal form actually does stand in opposition to individual
consciousness and individual will as the *form of the external thing*
(remember Kant's talers) and is necessarily perceived precisely as the
form of the external thing, not its palpable form, but as the form of
another equally palpable thing that it represents, expresses, embodies,
differing, however, from the palpable corporeality of both things and
having nothing in common with their sensuously perceptible physical
nature. What is embodied and "represented" here is a definite form of
labour, a definite form of human objective activity, that is to say, the
transformation of nature by social man.
The ideal form actually does stand in opposition to individual consciousness
and individual will as the *form of the external thing* but how and why?
Simply because the conventialized ideal form is not the only contributor to
the mundane formation of human consciousness. True, the entire content of
consciousness and will have their origins in social life, but the logical
processes that generate the ideal also are the modalities whereby men
conceptualise their own experiences, i.e. reflect upon their activities and
upon the material context of their actions. Though both the content and
means (logic) of subjective conceptualisation have objective origins, the
fact that they represent the agent's reflection
and conscious appreciation of the state of his own needs they do stand in
opposition to newly confronted idealities that have their origins in the
collective collaborative activity of the community.
74 - 79 The Answer To the Riddle of Ideality SG
*****[74. SG. EVI drives the point home. According to Marx, ideality is
nothing else but social human activity represented in the thing.]
Yes, indeed he does. But which thing? Is it the palpable material object
which has no identical partner in all the universe be it a pencil, a word,
or a human being or the objectified representation of human activity
manifested as an imagined thing in consciousness and materially represented
by language formations?
74
It is here that we find the answer to the riddle of "ideality". Ideality,
according to Marx, is nothing else but the form of social human activity
represented in the thing. Or, conversely, the form of human activity
represented *as a thing*, as an object.
Ibid!
*****[75. SG. Ideality is a kind of stamp impressed on the substance of
nature by social human life activity. All things involved in the social
process acquire this stamp - this ideality.
75
"Ideality" is a kind of stamp impressed on the substance of nature by
social human life activity, a form of the functioning of the physical
thing in the process of this activity. So all the things involved in the
social process acquire a new "form of existence" that is not included in
their physical nature and differs from it completely their ideal form.
Note here the rational structure of the sentence. The stamp impressed on
the substance of nature is human life activity. Ideality does not do the
stamping, rather it is the interpretation of the ideal through human
activity, which is never identical to the ideal (try drawing an ideal line
with a ruler or constructing a perfectly flat table with saw, plane and
sandpaper). The physical, material state of nature transformed by human
activity roughly corresponds to the idealities which serve as the object of
human activity, but the objective material conditions of productions
inevitably involve conditions that involve improvisation and modifications
of the abstract perfection that is the ideal.
*****[76. SG. Where no people are socially producing or reproducing
material life, where none are working collectively, there is no ideality.
However, this does not mean ideality is a product of conscious will. To
the contrary, conscious will is a product of ideality.
76
So, there can be no talk of "ideality" where there are no people socially
producing and reproducing their material life, that is to say, individuals
working collectively and, therefore, necessarily possessing consciousness
and will. But this does not mean that the "ideality of things" is a
product of their *conscious will*, that it is "immanent in the
consciousness" and exists only in the consciousness. Quite the reverse,
the individual's consciousness and will are functions of the ideality of
things, their comprehended, *conscious ideality*.
*****[77.1 SG. Ideality is purely social in origin. It is human activity
outside itself, it is the activity of a person outside that person.
*****[77.2 SG. Here, then, is the key to the whole mystery. This is the
real basis for all kinds of idealistic constructions and conceptions both
of man and of a world beyond man. EVI points out problems with trying to
"fix" idealist constructions, which will slip away.
77
Ideality, thus, has a purely social nature and origin. It is the form of a
thing, but it is outside this thing, and in the activity of man, as a
*form of this activity*. Or conversely, it is the form of a person's
activity but outside this person, *as a form of the thing*. Here, then, is
the key to the whole mystery that has provided a real basis for all kinds
of idealistic constructions and conceptions both of man and of a world
beyond man, from Plato to Carnap and Popper. "Ideality" constantly
escapes, slips away from the metaphysically single-valued theoretical
fixation. As soon as it is fixed as the "form of the thing" it begins to
tease the theoretician with its "immateriality", its "functional"
character and appears only as a form of "pure activity". On the other
hand, as soon as one attempts to fix it "as such", as purified of all the
traces of palpable corporeality, it turns out that this attempt is
fundamentally doomed to failure, that after such a purification there will
be nothing but phantasmal emptiness, an indefinable vacuum.
In essence this is what I wrote above about the dialectical construction of
the ideal as form of a thing (the conscious object of activity)
external to the thing as a *form of this activity*(i.e. as socially
endorsed practice) and as a person's activity (his physical/sensual labour
activity)but outside this person, *as a form of the thing* (as the imagined
ideal object of this activity).
*****[78. SG. It is absurd, as Hegel knew, to speak of activity that is
not realized in something definite, even if it us just words. Activity
that has no embodiment is better understood as inactivity.]
78
And indeed, as Hegel understood so well, it is absurd to speak of
,activity" that is not realised in anything definite, is not "embodied" in
something corporeal, if only in words, speech, language. If such
"activity" exists, it cannot be in reality but only in *possibility, only*
potentially, and, therefore, not as activity but as its opposite, as
*inactivity*, as the absence of activity.
*****[79. SG. This leads Hegel to believe that the "spirit" as the ideal
must oppose itself to an object, something different from itself.]
79
So, according to Hegel, the "spirit", as something ideal, as something
opposed to the world of corporeally established forms, cannot "reflect" at
all (i.e., become aware of the forms of its own structure) unless it
preliminarily opposes "itself to itself", as an ,object", a thing that
differs from itself.
80 - 85 Marx's Development of Hegel's Concept of Ideality SG
*****[80. SG. Marx uses the analogy of the mirror and the need of humans
to recognize themselves in others to explain the value-form of
commodities.]
80
When speaking of value-form as the ideal form of a thing, Marx by no means
accidentally uses the comparison of the mirror: "In a sort of way, it is
with man as with commodities. Since he comes into the world neither with a
looking glass in his hand, nor as a Fichtean philosopher, to whom 'I am I'
is sufficient, man first sees and recognises himself in other men. Peter
only establishes his own identity as a man by first comparing himself with
Paul as being of like kind. And thereby Paul, just as he stands in his
Pauline personality, becomes to Peter the type of the genus homo."
[Capital, Vol. I, p. 59.]
*****[81.1 SG. EVI continues to describe the parallel between Marx's
theory of the "ideality" of the value-form and Hegel's understanding of
"ideality."
*****[81.2 SG. In my opinion, the next sentence may contain EVI's
clearest alternative title for this article, and perhaps a more explicit
formulation of his theory. He says that Hegel's ideality takes into
account the dialectics of the emergence of the collective self-awareness
of the human race. This phrase collective self-awareness may be worth
setting aside for further examination. Is Ilyenkov's Concept of the Ideal
the basis for a Marxist Theory of Collective Self-Awareness?
What EVI refers to here is the dialectical development of awareness of genus
of being a part of family, of tribe, of civilization and of mankind. It is
the awareness of collective being and not the collective awareness of being,
Between these there's all the difference between a materialist understanding
of the developing awareness of ethos and ethnicity as a function of the
dialectical history of social practice and a mystical idealist absolutist
understanding of the dialectical history of the ideal as the development of
an autonomous entity that has as its final product the realisation of itself
through the medium of human activity.
The idea that the emergence of the collective self-awareness of the human
race as the absolute object of the dialectics of history is virtually
identical to Hegel's mystical representation of history as the emergence of
self-awareness of the ideal of its own being. It is an absolute
contradiction to the Marxist transformation of Hegelian idealism with its
"bloodless" envisionment of human history as a history of conceptual
formulations. For Marx men to not think in order to exist but think as one
of the functions of their existence. The ideal is only one component of the
full range of significant human activity and is as such very much dependent
on other aspects of human activity for both its existence and for the forms
in which it is manifested in the course of human history.
*****[81.3 SG. Hegel's "spirit" must first turn into an object - first,
in the form of the word, then in the forms of all cultural artifacts.
Hegel realized that ideality can only be known through an analysis of its
embodiments.
81
Here Marx plainly indicates the parallel between his theory of the
"ideality" of the value-form and Hegel's understanding of "ideality",
which takes into account the dialectics of the emergence of the collective
self-awareness of the human race. Yes, Hegel understood the situation far
more broadly and profoundly than the "Fichtean philosopher"; he
established the fact that "spirit", before it could examine itself, must
shed its unblemished purity and phantasmal nature, and must itself turn
*into an object* and in the form of this object oppose itself to itself.
At first in the form of the Word, in the form of verbal "embodiment", and
then in the form of instruments of labour, statues, machines, guns,
churches, factories, constitutions and states, in the form of the
grandiose "inorganic body of man", in the form of the sensuously
perceptible body of civilisation which for him serves only as a glass in
which he can examine himself, his "other being", and know through this
examination his own "pure ideality", understanding himself as "pure
activity". Hegel realised full well that ideality as "pure activity" is
not directly given and cannot be given "as such", immediately in all its
purity and undisturbed perfection; it can be known only through analysis
of its "embodiments", through its reflection in the glass of palpable
reality, in the glass of the system of things (their forms and
relationships) created by the activity of "pure spirit". By their fruits
ye shall know them-and not otherwise.
*****[82. SG. According to Hegel ideal forms are realized in some
material, or they remain unknown to the active spirit. To examine these
ideal forms they must become "reified," turned into forms and relations of
things. Only this way can ideality exist.
The immediate materialization of the ideal for Hegel and for Marx is
language. Hence the material realization of the ideal is first and foremost
through the vocal, graphic, and gesture forms that unite with the ideal as
symbolic representation of concepts. For Hegel, who posits that the ideal
is the alpha and omega of human knowledge, the transformation of language
forms into deeds is indeed simply a representation of spirit. For Marx and
most dialectical historians, the realization of ideal in human production is
conditional upon natural conditions that are quite independent in their
origins from the idealities concocted by human thought. Thus the expression
of spirit through labour is for Marxism hardly simply a determination of the
form and substance of nature by ideality. It also involves the laws and
principles of nature as they are manifested in the special case of the
interaction of human life forms in interaction with the natural conditions
of their productive activity.
82
The ideal forms of the world are, according to Hegel, forms of activity
*realised* in some material. If they are not realised in some palpable
material, they remain invisible and unknown for the active spirit itself,
the spirit cannot become aware of them. In order to examine them they must
be "reified", that is, turned into the forms and relations of *things*.
Only in this case does ideality exist, does it possess *present* being;
only as a reified and reifiable form of activity, a form of activity that
has become and is becoming the form of an object, a palpable thing outside
consciousness, and in no case as a transcendental-psychological pattern of
consciousness, not as the internal pattern of the "self", distinguishing
itself from itself within itself, as it turned out with the "Fichtean
philosopher".
dealt with above.
*****[83. SG. In the form of individual consciousness, ideality cannot
become real. It becomes real in the course of its reification (treating
ideas as real objects, fetishism), objectification (transforming human
activity into a real object), deobjectification (transforming natural
objects into humanized objects), alienation (estrangement) and the
sublation (supersession, synthesis, overcoming) of alienation. EVI
emphasizes that these concepts, compared with those of Kant and Fichte,
were far superior for embracing human social development.
Ibid.
83
As the internal pattern of the activity of *consciousness*, as a pattern
"immanent in the consciousness", ideality can have only an illusory, only
a phantasmal existence. It becomes real only in the course of its
reification, objectification (and deobjectification), alienation and the
sublation of alienation. How much more reasonable and realistic this
interpretation was, compared with that of Kant and Fichte, is
self-evident. It embraced the actual dialectics of people's developing
"self-consciousness", it embraced the actual phases and metamorphoses in
whose succession alone the "ideality" of the world exists.
ibid
*****[84. SG. EVI points out that this is why Marx joined Hegel and not
Kant or Fichte with regard to terminology.]
84
It is for this reason that Marx joins Hegel in respect of terminology, and
not Kant or Fichte, who tried to solve the problem of "ideality" (i.e.,
activity) while remaining "inside consciousness", without venturing into
the external sensuously perceptible corporeal world, the world of the
palpable forms and relations of things.
*****[85. SG. The Hegelian use of the term ideality refers to the entire
range of the physically embodied activity of social humankind.]
85
This Hegelian definition of the term "ideality" took in the whole range of
phenomena within which the "ideal", understood as *the corporeally
embodied form of the activity of social* man, really exists.
The problem with Hegel's understanding of "the whole range of phenomena
within which the "ideal", understood as *the corporeally embodied form of
the activity of social* man," is best described by Marx's critique in his
Contribution to the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1844). For Hegel this
grand range of phenomena is nothing more or less than the sum total of
man's abstract knowledge of the nature of the world. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with flesh-and-blood nature or sweat-blood-and-tears nature
of actual labour activity.
86 - 89 Fathoming the Miracles of the Commodity SG
Almost all this material I discussed above
*****[86. SG. Commodities, money, and words, for example, are wholly
"material," but their acquire their meaning from the "ideal," from
"spirit."
86
Without an understanding of this circumstance it would be totally
impossible to fathom the miracles performed before man's eyes by the
COMMODITY, the commodity form of the product, particularly in its money
form, in the form of the notorious "real talers", "real rubles", or "real
dollars", things which, as soon as we have the slightest theoretical
understanding of them, immediately turn out to be not "real" at all, but
"ideal" through and through, things whose category quite unambiguously
includes *words*, the units of *language*, and many other "things". Things
which, while being wholly "material", palpable formations, acquire all
their "meaning" (function and role) from "spirit" and even owe to it their
specific bodily existence .... Outside spirit and without it there cannot
even be words, there is merely a vibration of the air.
*****[87. SG. This secret of the ideality of "things" was first revealed
by Marx in his analysis of the value form.]
87
The mysteriousness of this category of "things", the secret of their
"ideality", their sensuous-supersensuous character was first revealed by
Marx in the course of his analysis of the commodity (value) form of the
product.
*****[88. SG. Marx characterizes the commodity form as an ideal form.
This form has nothing in common with the actual body in which it is
represented (realized).
88
Marx characterises the commodity form as an IDEAL form, i.e., as a form
that has absolutely nothing in common with the real palpable form of the
body in which it is represented (i.e., expressed, materialised, reified,
alienated, realised), and by means of which it "exists", possesses
"present being".
*****[89. SG. A commodity is ideal because it does not include any of
the substance of the body in which it is represented. Likewise, the
physical thing in which it is represented includes none of the original
commodity's materiality. There is no boot polish in a gold coin, and no
gold in boot polish. But certain amounts of each are considered to have
equal value. To add a few lines of my own, how can gold and boot polish
be equal? How can they mirror the other? They can do so because they are
mirroring not themselves, but a social relationship that they each
represent, in this case, a quantity of human labor. What kind of mirror
is this that can perform such a feat? This is the mirror of ideality,
which allows social relationships to be represented in things. Returning
to EVI's line of discussion, this act of representation can take place
outside the head of the seller and buyer. Everyone can spend money
without knowing what money is.]
89
It is "ideal" because it does not include a single atom of the substance
of the body in which it is represented, because it is the form of quite
*another body*. And this other body is present here not bodily, materially
("bodily" it is at quite a different point in space), but only once again
"ideally", and here there is not a single atom of its substance. Chemical
analysis of a gold coin will not reveal a single molecule of boot-polish,
and vice versa. Nevertheless, a gold coin represents (expresses) the value
of a hundred tins of boot-polish precisely by its weight and gleam. And,
of course, this act of representation is performed not in the
consciousness of the seller of boot-polish, but outside his consciousness
in any "sense" of this word, outside his head, in the space of the market,
and without his having even the slightest suspicion of the mysterious
nature of the money form and the essence of the price of boot-polish....
Everyone can spend money without knowing what money is.
90 The Ideal Is Objective SG
*****[90. SG. A fluent speaker can have trouble with their own language
when they try to understand the relationship between sign and meaning.
Linguistic studies could place them in the position of the centipede who
was unwise enough to ask himself which foot he steps off on. The
difficulty of understanding ideality consists in the fact that ideal
forms, like the value-form, the form of thought, or syntactical form, turn
into something objective, completely independent of anyone's
consciousness, and occur outside the head - although not without its
participation. The ideal is objective.]
Indeed the ideal is objective and it is this fact as well as another, that
the means whereby men transmit information concerning the real is identical
to the means whereby the ideal is realized in material form, that is through
the media of language forms, makes it so difficult to distinguish where the
ideal ends and the real begins.
"There is however a real difference between the ideal and the real and it
here that we can realize the restrictions on ideality as a comprehensive
representation of the life activity of men. As Ilyenkov put it:
It will be appreciated that the main difficulty and, therefore, the main
problem of philosophy is not to distinguish and counterpose everything that
is "in the consciousness of the individual" to everything that is outside
this individual consciousness (this is hardly ever difficult to do), but to
delimit the world of collectively acknowledged notions, that is, the whole
socially organised world of intellectual culture with all its stable and
materially established universal patterns, and the real world as it exists
outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of
"experience" [emphasis is mine VTFR]. (Ilyenkov 1977, ¶54)
90
For this very reason the person who confidently uses his native language
to express the most subtle and complex circumstances of life finds himself
in a very difficult position if he takes it into his head to acquire
consciousness of the relationship between the "sign" and the "meaning".
The consciousness which he may derive from linguistic studies in the
present state of the science of linguistics is more likely to place him in
the position of the centipede who was unwise enough to ask himself which
foot he steps off on. And the whole difficulty which has caused so much
bother to philosophy as well lies in the fact that "ideal forms", like the
value-form, the form of thought or syntactical form, have always arisen,
taken shape and developed, turned into something objective, completely
independent of anyone's consciousness, in the course of processes that
occur not at all in the "head", but most definitely outside it although
not without its participation.
________________________________________________________
<end of selection from essay>
<end of my post>
I strongly suggest that you go into Ilyenkov's extensive discourse on the
nature of material reality and on science. Reading and rereading his
material on ideality without familiarity with his much more extensive
discussion of historical material science reminds me a bit of Lenin's apt
criticism of Hegelian idealism:
"From the standpoint of dialectical materialism, on the other hand,
philosophical idealism is a one-sided,
exaggerated, development (inflation, distension) of one of the features,
aspects, facets of knowledge, into an absolute, divorced from matter, from
nature, apotheosized." from Lenin's Annotations on Book III (The Notion) of
Hegel's Science of Logic from Lenin's Collected Works Vol. 38 pp165 - 238
Ilyenkov distinguishes between ideal ethical and practical (material) labour
activity, in a fashion somewhat reminiscent of Vygotsky's distinction
between activity involving tools and activity involving symbols [though
Ilyenkov, correctly I believe, defines language as a tool and distinguishes
between productive practice and social - perhaps socializing here is a
better term - practice]. The ethical ideal is a necessary condition for the
development of human labour practice, but the natural science knowledge
[universally natural practical materialism rather than socially restricted
social or ethical idealism]sublates it and in fact becomes the instrument
for gaining a material-practical understanding of the development and
management of the ethical ideal.
___________________________________________________________
<end of my post>
Oudeyis
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