A Defence of History and Class Consciousness: Tailism and the Dialectic, by
Georg Lukács; translated by Esther Leslie, with an introduction by John
Rees and a postface by Slavoj Zizek. London; New York: Verso, 2000. 182
pp. (Lukacs' ms: pp. 45-149.)
II. Dialectic of Nature
1. Exchange of matter with nature
2. Simple and higher categories of the dialectic
3. Once again: exchange of matter with nature
4. For us and for itself
I'm not in a position to compare Lukacs' ms with his comments on this
subject in HCC. Rees, however, says that Lukacs says new things here with
respect to the dialectic of nature. And this section of the ms is highly
intriguing. Lukacs really has no animus against the notion of the
dialectic of nature, though he does make an interesting argument that such
a bare bones dialectic cannot even do justice to the dialectics of
scientific practice. The real issue is the transposition of a dialectic of
nature to make theoretical social and political claims, as do Rudas and
Deborin, thus effecting a fundamental distortion of Marxism.
Lukacs counterposes historical materialism to the old materialism that Marx
and Engels criticized. Key here is the notion of mediation, opposed to the
naive positing of immediacy. (95) The relationship to nature is socially
mediated, not immediate. (96) (Another way of saying this is that social
being determines social consciousness--see also p. 100.) Rudas, imprisoned
in Kantianism, cannot overcome his dualism, whereas people and society fall
on the subjective side of the dividing line and nature on the objective.
(100ff) Rudas' notion of objective reality is too parsimonious. Of course
society arose from nature, nature and its laws existed prior to society,
dialectic must have existed in nature in order for dialectic to exist in
society. However, without the mediation provided by new social dialectical
forms, neither knowledge of nature or of society would be
knowable. (102!) The dialectical understanding of knowledge is part of
the objective process of social development. Knowledge of nature, however
restricted, is a basic condition of survival, and goes hand in hand with
the 'exchange of matter between society and nature', which corresponds to
the economic development of society. (103)
And here there is an important argument against drawing relativist
conclusions from the social conditioning of knowledge. (104)
The relationship to nature is always socially mediated. Lukacs protests
against the false accusation of 'agnosticism' for denying an immediate
relationship of humans to nature. (106) Lukacs rakes Rudas over the coals,
accusing him of seeking to 'eliminate the human process of thought from
thought' a la Bolzano and Husserl. (107)
Section 2--"Simple and higher categories of the dialectic"(pp. 108-113)--
is so interesting I'm tempted to reproduce the whole of the text. While
objective dialectical interconnections may exist, they may or may not show
up as dialectical thought, depending on the historical development of
society. Deborin, citing Hegel, objects to Lukacs' neglect of the simple
categories of the dialectic in favour of the higher ones.' But even if
Hegel supports Deborin's view, for Marx, just the opposite is the case: the
lower form can only be understood from the vantage point of the
higher. (Human anatomy is key to ape's anatomy; advance from the abstract
to the concrete as way of thought, not reality.) Thus Lukacs is not
interested in 'transformation of quantity into quality, etc., but rather
interaction of subject and object, unity of theory and praxis, alteration
of the categories as effect of the change of material (reality underlying
the categories).'
Back to the exchange of matter with nature: here there is a double
determination: interaction with nature, and the economic structure of
society. How could modern natural science be understood differently than
anything else? (113) Well, the capitalist organization of knowledge and
technology is something new in history, and it is this organization that is
requisite for capitalism to exist. (114) Modern natural sciences are a
product of capitalist development, but, contra relativism, this makes them
no less objective. (115) But is scientific knowledge conditioned by
capitalism in some other way that being produced by it? Must objective
cognition always be dialectical? Lukacs' response is hard to decipher
(116) But the specific problem is that historical knowledge depends on
social self-criticism. The transition from pre-capitalist forms of society
to capitalism must be fundamentally different from the transformation of
capitalism to socialism. If we cannot demonstrate the historical genesis of
our cognition, then we have not matured objectively as well as subjectively
to be able to grasp this aspect of objective dialectic. Natural sciences do
not lack elements of historical cognition, but historical and dialectical
knowledge first comes into its own only with Marx. Perhaps these questions
are not central to the concerns of these sciences. A paragraph above this,
Lukacs says: 'It is altogether possible that the present crisis of the
natural sciences is already a sign of the imminent revolutionising of its
material basis and not merely a reflex of the general ideological crisis of
capitalism in decline.'
We cannot answer the question as 'To what extent all knowledge of nature
can ever be transformed into historical knowledge,' (i.e. whether there are
transhistorical invariances), because our knowledge (i.e. objective
situation) has not matured to be able to answer it. Objective kowledge
will advance in its usual impartial way. Natural scientists do not have to
be aware of this problem at all in order to create objective
knowledge. However, they cannot understand in a dialectical manner
contradictions that arise, and take on a unified historical theoretical
perspective. (118)
Now I find this material most intriguing, though so abstract and arcane, I
can't quite pin it down. I think we could get some mileage out of it for
our purposes now, but it will take a lot of work and filling in the gaps.
(to be continued)
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