Steve,
All but these directions is included in the body of your text.
----- 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: Sunday, June 19, 2005 10:11
Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Victor,
I have read your response carefully. I think I am getting a handle on our
differing approaches. They seem to emerge in the way we understand issues
such as:
a) where is ideality "located"?
b) where is value is "located"?
c) what is the "essence" of ideality?
d) what is the "essence" of value?
e) what is "represented" in a commodity?
f) what does the "stamping" of human activity on a cultural artifact?
Please correct me if I am getting your views wrong in any way. On several
questions, I am not yet clear on what your answer would be.
I am speaking roughly for each of us, hoping to drive out any essential
paradigm differences.
a) where is ideality "located"?
I would answer a) "in cultural artifacts," using the term in its broadest
possible sense (tools, signs, all human creations and observations, etc.)
I think you would answer a) "in representations."
Ideality like spoken language is not one thing or another, but two things,
the objectified notion in consciousness and its material representation by
some form of language, united as a more concrete concept, the ideal. The
ideal cannot just be a manifestation of consciousness (Dubrovsky's argument)
in which case it would be a purely subjective product, at best the internal
expression of the individuality of the thinker (whatever that might be).
Nor can it be just the symbolic representation since this after all is
ultimately just a thing, a material object. It is only when consciousness
is given material form by symbolic representation and the material artefact
is made significant by its embodiment of conscious reflective thought that
the ideal can be said to exist.
b) where is value "located"?
I would answer b) with "each particular commodity." It appears that you
would answer b) in concepts of commodities, but definitely not specific
commodities.
Abstract value is indeed a concept and can only be represented in material
form by symbolic forms such as speech and text. The specific value of
concrete goods is price, but this too is only expressible in symbolic forms
such as dollars and cents and pounds and pence be it in speech, in the
little labels they attach to marketed goods, or in the exchange of coinage
for the desired good.
c) what is the "essence" of ideality?
I would answer c) with "human activity." You answer c) with
"representation."
The essence of ideality is representation, the subject of ideality is human
activity represented as the object of that activity.
d) what is the "essence of value"?
I would answer d) with abstract labor, or socially determined necessary
labor time. I am not sure how you would answer this one.
Value represents labour activity. The essence of value is commodity
production, that is the production of goods for trade.
e) what is "represented" in a commodity?
I would answer e) in terms of particular commodities being a combination
of concrete and abstract labor. I am not yet clear on how you would
answer this one.
A commodity is an article produced for the express purpose of exchanging it
for other articles. See MIA's encyclopedia of Marxism:
"A commodity is something that is produced for the purpose of exchanging for
something else, and as such, is the material form given to a fundamental
social relation - the exchange of labour."
f) what does the "stamping" of ideality on a cultural artifact?
I would answer f) direct human activity. You answer f) the interpretation
of the ideal through human activity, but I am not yet clear on what this
precisely means.
Here Marx's description of labour activity is relevant:
"We pre-suppose labour in a form that stamps it as exclusively human. A
spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts
to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what
distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the
architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in
reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already
existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only
effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also
realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and
to which he must subordinate his will [emphasis is mine VTFR]. And this
subordination is no mere momentary act. Besides the exertion of the bodily
organs, the process demands that, during the whole operation, the workman's
will be steadily in consonance with his purpose. (Marx 1867 Capital Vol. I)
In short, ideality is expressed in a cultural artefact through human labour
informed by the image of the object of his labour activity. For an idealist
such as Hegel who regards human activity as beginning and ending with the
ideal, the outcome of human labour is a simple materialization of the ideal.
For a Marxist materialist, labour practice involves far more than just the
expression of the ideal in material form. Labour activity involves the
interaction between men as creatures of nature (you know; arms, legs, hands,
eyes and things like that.) and nature and therefore the "intervention" of
natural laws and principles that are external to the ideal and are entirely
indifferent to the social conventions of mankind. Thus the outcome of
labour is a considerably more complex product than the idealists would have
us believe it is.
"I would also add here that not only is production a unity of consciousness
(ideality) and physical/sensual activity, but so too is the acquisition of
labour skills.
A person cannot pass the ideal as such to another person, as the pure form
of activity. One can observe the activity of a painter or an engineer as
long as one likes, striving to catch their mode of action, the form of their
activity, but one can thus only copy the external techniques and methods of
their work but never the ideal image itself, the active faculty itself. The
ideal, as the form of subjective activity, is only masterable through active
operation with the object and product of this activity, i.e. through the
form of its product, through the objective form of the thing, through its
active disobjectification. The ideal image of objective reality therefore
also only exists as the form (mode, image) of living activity, coordinated
with the form of its object, but not as a thing, not as a materially fixed
state or structure." (Ilyenkov Dialectical Logic Chapter 8 paragraph 50)
There are several areas to clarify, but the pattern that seems to be
emerging is that on several important issues I tend to think in terms of
direct human activity where you tend to think in terms of concepts and
representations.
Not exactly.
You are thinking strictly in terms of human activity and its material
products while I'm thinking dialectically in both concepts and
representations and in human activity and its material products. The
insistence that synthesis can only come from chosing either activity and
material products or concepts and representations (and vice versa) is
exactly the method of both subjective idealism (Kant and his epigones) and
of what Lenin called simple metaphysical materialism (Von Holbach, Feuerbach
and to some degree Spinoza). The dialectical synthetic method developed by
Hegel, adopted by Marx and Engels and eventually by Lenin and considerably
elucidated by EVI involves going from the abstract (incomplete)
representations of metaphysical materialism and metaphysical idealism to a
more concrete representation that unites activity and consciousness in a
single, more concrete concept.
Thoughts?
When you get some free time, take Ilyenkov's theoretical stuff; Dialectics
of the Abstract and the Concrete...(1960), Dialectical Logic (1974), and
...The Dialectics of Positivism (1979) and read them from cover to cover
taking copious notes along the way. While doing this look through A Blunden
and CLR Jones material on Hegel (I wouldn't wish reading Hegel on my worst
enemy! but you might try it here and there just to get a feel for his work)
and go over Lenin's philosophical writings (in MIA archives). I also think
you should become better acquainted with Hegelian logical method and expand
your acquaintance with Ilyenkov beyond his discourse on the ideal. I get the
feeling that XMCA people are trying to understand EVI from reading about a
10th of his complete writings and from other peoples interpretations most of
which are, in the best academic fashion, mainly reinterpretations of other
commentators work. You want to understand Marx? read Marx, you want to
understand Ilyenkov? read Ilyenkov.
- Steve
With highest regards,
Oudeyis.
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