[Marxism-Thaxis] The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man

[Charles Brown]

In re, discussion of difference between apes and man (sic).

 "in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself."

Yes, but as Marx had said in _Capital_ , human labor is distinguished by its
planning in imagination ahead of time, making it thickly social. It is
activity saturated with the ideality of the nightmare of all previous
generations in it.



Charles

^


The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man



Written: in May-June 1876;
First published: in Die Neue Zeit 1895-06;
Translated: from the German by Clemens Dutt;
First published in English: by Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1934;
Transcribed: by [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jan 1996.



This article was intended to introduce a larger work which Engels planned to
call Die drei Grundformen der Knechtschaft -- Outline of the General Plan.
Engels never finished it, nor even this intro, which breaks off at the end.
It would be included in Dialectics of Nature.




I


Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it
really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material
that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It
is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an
extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.

Many hundreds of thousands of years ago, during an epoch, not yet definitely
determinable, of that period of the earth's history known to geologists as
the Tertiary period, most likely towards the end of it, a particularly
highly-developed race of anthropoid apes lived somewhere in the tropical
zone -- probably on a great continent that has now sunk to the bottom of the
Indian Ocean. [1]

Darwin has given us an approximate description of these ancestors of ours.
They were completely covered with hair, they had beards and pointed ears,
and they lived in bands in the trees. 

First, owing to their way of living which meant that the hands had different
functions than the feet when climbing, these apes began to lose the habit of
using their hands to walk and adopted a more and more erect posture. This
was the decisive step in the transition from ape to man.

All extant anthropoid apes can stand erect and move about on their feet
alone, but only in case of urgent need and in a very clumsy way. Their
natural gait is in a half-erect posture and includes the use of the hands.
The majority rest the knuckles of the fist on the ground and, with legs
drawn up, swing the body through their long arms, much as a cripple moves on
crutches. In general, all the transition stages from walking on all fours to
walking on two legs are still to be observed among the apes today. The
latter gait, however, has never become more than a makeshift for any of
them.

It stands to reason that if erect gait among our hairy ancestors became
first the rule and then, in time, a necessity, other diverse functions must,
in the meantime, have devolved upon the hands. Already among the apes there
is some difference in the way the hands and the feet are employed. In
climbing, as mentioned above, the hands and feet have different uses. The
hands are used mainly for gathering and holding food in the same way as the
fore paws of the lower mammals are used. Many apes use their hands to build
themselves nests in the trees or even to construct roofs between the
branches to protect themselves against the weather, as the chimpanzee, for
example, does. With their hands they grasp sticks to defend themselves
against enemies, or bombard their enemies with fruits and stones. In
captivity they use their hands for a number of simple operations copied from
human beings. It is in this that one sees the great gulf between the
undeveloped hand of even the most man-like apes and the human hand that has
been highly perfected by hundreds of thousands of years of labour. The
number and general arrangement of the bones and muscles are the same in both
hands, but the hand of the lowest savage can perform hundreds of operations
that no simian hand can imitate-no simian hand has ever fashioned even the
crudest stone knife.

The first operations for which our ancestors gradually learned to adapt
their hands during the many thousands of years of transition from ape to man
could have been only very simple ones. The lowest savages, even those in
whom regression to a more animal-like condition with a simultaneous physical
degeneration can be assumed, are nevertheless far superior to these
transitional beings. Before the first flint could be fashioned into a knife
by human hands, a period of time probably elapsed in comparison with which
the historical period known to us appears insignificant. But the decisive
step had been taken, the hand had become free and could henceforth attain
ever greater dexterity; 

[Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Charles Brown]

 Victor victor 

I regard Ilyenkov's contribution rather as the Logic (method or met) for a 
practical (materialist or natural science) of ethics (ethos).

There is a restriction as to what degree social relations are actually 
embodied in all cultural objects, this restriction being those imposed by 
the universal natural laws and principles as they apply to the interaction 
of labour, instruments and the subjects of production (materia, parts etc.) 
involved in the productive process.  It is the irreducible fact that 
production involves relations that are entirely indifferent to human social 
activity and to human consciousness collective or otherwise that compromises

any hypothesis that artefacts may be the representations of ideals or of 
social life.  I would go further than this and argue that it is the very 
irreducibility of human labour to a simple replication of idealized objects 
that forms the material basis for the dynamics of human development and the 
indeterminism intrinsic to all human endeavor.

^^^
CB: When an idea grips masses, it becomes _a_ material force, not all the
material force involved in human affairs. 

Science is ideas which allow a certain finite and sufficient mastery of
nature , and consequent freedom, as pointed out by Hegel and Engels.

Leaving the realm of necessity and entering the "realm of freedom" is
historical materialism, the theory of class society and its history,
rendering itself obsolete. Production can proceed by planning rather than by
a process that goes on behind the backs of the producers , etc.

^

^

Ilyenkov by presenting a materialist theory of the ideal, the ideal as a 
product of men's "socialization" of productive experience be of his own 
labour or of mobilizing and controlling the labour of others, provides us 
with a model for explaining how practical activity becomes ethical activity.

This is extremely important not only to Marxist theory but to the general 
model of historical development, since the ideal as the means whereby men 
coordinate their activity with others is not the creative activity that 
enables human adaptation to world conditions. It more than any other theory 
of social life explains the contradiction implicit in adaptively; 
conservation of historical developments together with creative modification 
of labour and means of production in response to changing natural 
conditions.
Oudeyis


CB: We need ethical theory to answer , once again, the question "what is to
be done ?"


- Original Message - 
From: "Charles Brown" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis> >
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx 
andthe thinkers he inspired'" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis> >
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 15:24
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst


>
> Victor
>
>> 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.
>
> 
> CB: When an idea grips masses ( is social), it becomes a material force.
>
>


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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] ANB - Bio of the Day: Henry Winston [fwd]

[Victor]

Ralph,
Thanks for the info, Henry Winston and Ben Davis were friends of the family 
and were occasional visitors at the house.  Incidentally, I met Winston and 
Fern for the last time in 1968.  They were then living in our high rise 
complex in NYC.

Oudeyis

- Original Message - 
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 16:43
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] ANB - Bio of the Day: Henry Winston [fwd]



Special Announcement: OUP is pleased to announce that ANB Online is now
available by individual subscription for $14.95 a month. For more
information or to subscribe, please visit http://www.anb.org.


  American National Biography Online
   [ illustration ]
Henry Winston. Second row, center, with
John Williamson, left, and Jacob Stachel, right.  Front row,
left to right: Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, and Benjamin Davis.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-111436).




Winston, Henry (2 Apr. 1911-13 Dec. 1986), a leading figure in
the Communist party of the United States for forty years, was
born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the son of Joseph Winston,
a sawmill worker, and Lucille (maiden name not known). Both of
his parents were children of slaves.

 The family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, after World War I.
Winston dropped out of high school in 1930 and, unable to find
a job, participated in demonstrations of the unemployed led by
the Communist party (CPUSA). Impressed by Communist efforts to
help the jobless and agitate on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys,
six young African Americans from Alabama convicted of raping
two white women in a trial permeated by racism, he first joined
the Young Communist League in 1931 and the Communist party shortly 
thereafter.


 Promising young black Communists were not common in the early
1930s, and Winston quickly ascended the party ladder. He moved
to New York City soon after joining the YCL, and for the next
two years he organized unemployed workers. In 1932 he was involved
with the National Hunger March to Washington, D.C., and in 1933
he made the first of many trips to the Soviet Union. Elected
to the National Executive Committee of the YCL in 1936, he served
as the organization's national executive secretary from 1937 to 1942.

 Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1942, Winston (serving in Great
Britain and France) was out of the country when Earl Browder,
the party's general secretary, dissolved the CPUSA in favor of
a political association in 1944. As a result, he was untainted
by the political sin of "Browderism" when, in 1945, the Soviet
Union signaled its displeasure with Browder's decision. When
the long-time party leader refused to recant, he was removed
from his position and expelled. In 1945, following Winston's
release from the army and the party's reconstitution, he was
appointed to the National Committee of the CPUSA. Two years later
he was chosen as organizational secretary, making him one of
the party's top leaders.

 Winston was thus one of eleven party leaders arrested in 1948
and charged with violating the Smith Act, a sedition law passed
by Congress in 1940. Tried on charges of conspiring "to teach
and advocate the overthrow" of the U.S. government by "force
and violence," Winston and the other defendants were convicted
in 1949 after a rowdy trial in New York where Winston was one
of several to draw contempt citations for his conduct.

 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Smith
Act in Dennis v. the U.S. in 1951. Convinced that fascism was
imminent in the United States, concerned that the party's leadership
might never emerge from prison, and determined to preserve its
top cadres, the CPUSA decided to organize an underground apparatus.
Four of the Smith Act defendants, including Winston, jumped bail
and went into hiding. Winston managed to evade an intensive FBI
manhunt and remained underground for nearly five years. At first,
he lived in Brooklyn. Early in 1952, he moved to the Chicago
area, traveling disguised as a clergyman. He lived with sympathetic
families, used false names, and tried to remain inconspicuous.
Two of the fugitives were arrested by 1953. Winston and Gil Green,
the other National Board member still at large, met occasionally
to discuss party policy. During this period Winston wrote for
the party press under the name Frederick Hastings.

 As the issue of communism lost its potency, the fugitives began
to discuss surrendering. In March 1956, with Joseph R. McCarthy
censured by the U.S. Senate and their co-defendants emerging
from prison, Winston and Green, the last remaining party leaders
still in hiding, surrendered to federal authorities; in addition
to the five-year sentence for violating the Smith Act, Winston
faced an additional three years for jumping bail.

 Sent to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, Winston
began to suffer from headaches and dizzy spells in 1958. Not
until 1960 was he dia

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Victor]

I regard Ilyenkov's contribution rather as the Logic (method or met) for a 
practical (materialist or natural science) of ethics (ethos).


There is a restriction as to what degree social relations are actually 
embodied in all cultural objects, this restriction being those imposed by 
the universal natural laws and principles as they apply to the interaction 
of labour, instruments and the subjects of production (materia, parts etc.) 
involved in the productive process.  It is the irreducible fact that 
production involves relations that are entirely indifferent to human social 
activity and to human consciousness collective or otherwise that compromises 
any hypothesis that artefacts may be the representations of ideals or of 
social life.  I would go further than this and argue that it is the very 
irreducibility of human labour to a simple replication of idealized objects 
that forms the material basis for the dynamics of human development and the 
indeterminism intrinsic to all human endeavor.


Ilyenkov by presenting a materialist theory of the ideal, the ideal as a 
product of men's "socialization" of productive experience be of his own 
labour or of mobilizing and controlling the labour of others, provides us 
with a model for explaining how practical activity becomes ethical activity. 
This is extremely important not only to Marxist theory but to the general 
model of historical development, since the ideal as the means whereby men 
coordinate their activity with others is not the creative activity that 
enables human adaptation to world conditions. It more than any other theory 
of social life explains the contradiction implicit in adaptively; 
conservation of historical developments together with creative modification 
of labour and means of production in response to changing natural 
conditions.

Oudeyis


- Original Message - 
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx 
andthe thinkers he inspired'" 

Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 15:24
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst




Victor


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.


CB: When an idea grips masses ( is social), it becomes a material force.



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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] ANB - Bio of the Day: Henry Winston [fwd]

[Waistline2]

>>Winston, Henry (2 Apr. 1911-13 Dec. 1986), a leading figure in the 
Communist party of the United States for forty years, was born in Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi, the son of Joseph Winston, a sawmill worker, and Lucille (maiden 
name 
not known). Both of his parents were children of slaves.<<

Comment 

Thanks. 

Very informative. Back in the early 1970s Winston's "Strategy for a Black 
Agenda" became the focal point of some intense discussions that would later 
shape 
and consolidate my view on what constitutes the working class movement in 
America and the history of the American communists approach to slavery the 
formation of the American Union and the evolution of the industrial classes in 
the 
North. 

Perhaps in the future some astute author will chronicle the role of African 
American communists in their work amongst the African American peoples; their 
various organizations and as LEADERS OF THE WORKING CLASS - in general, in and 
outside the union movement. The latter role as real leaders of sections of the 
industrial working class - in and outside the trade union movement, would 
crystallized in the post Detroit 1967 Rebellion period. 

Henry was one of the Southern Mississippi boyz, born in an area of one of the 
centers of the fascists counterrevolution that overthrew the democratically 
elected Reconstruction governments of the post Civil War era. It would be 
interesting to know his theoretical, polemical and gut reaction to the 
political 
reasoning of Harry Haywood's 1948 "Negro Liberation."  

Me . . . I am a one of those Northern boyz, second generation autoworker who 
matured and attained adulthood in the post Jim Crow era and lived the process 
that birthed the political separation of the black workers from the black 
bourgeoisie and reconfigured our working class movement forever. 

Nice bio. Nice Juneteenth and Father day piece. 

Waistline 

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[Marxism-Thaxis] ANB - Bio of the Day: Henry Winston [fwd]

[Ralph Dumain]

Special Announcement: OUP is pleased to announce that ANB Online is now
available by individual subscription for $14.95 a month. For more
information or to subscribe, please visit http://www.anb.org.


  American National Biography Online
   [ illustration ]
Henry Winston. Second row, center, with
John Williamson, left, and Jacob Stachel, right.  Front row,
left to right: Eugene Dennis, William Z. Foster, and Benjamin Davis.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress (LC-USZ62-111436).




Winston, Henry (2 Apr. 1911-13 Dec. 1986), a leading figure in
the Communist party of the United States for forty years, was
born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the son of Joseph Winston,
a sawmill worker, and Lucille (maiden name not known). Both of
his parents were children of slaves.

 The family moved to Kansas City, Missouri, after World War I.
Winston dropped out of high school in 1930 and, unable to find
a job, participated in demonstrations of the unemployed led by
the Communist party (CPUSA). Impressed by Communist efforts to
help the jobless and agitate on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys,
six young African Americans from Alabama convicted of raping
two white women in a trial permeated by racism, he first joined
the Young Communist League in 1931 and the Communist party shortly 
thereafter.


 Promising young black Communists were not common in the early
1930s, and Winston quickly ascended the party ladder. He moved
to New York City soon after joining the YCL, and for the next
two years he organized unemployed workers. In 1932 he was involved
with the National Hunger March to Washington, D.C., and in 1933
he made the first of many trips to the Soviet Union. Elected
to the National Executive Committee of the YCL in 1936, he served
as the organization's national executive secretary from 1937 to 1942.

 Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1942, Winston (serving in Great
Britain and France) was out of the country when Earl Browder,
the party's general secretary, dissolved the CPUSA in favor of
a political association in 1944. As a result, he was untainted
by the political sin of "Browderism" when, in 1945, the Soviet
Union signaled its displeasure with Browder's decision. When
the long-time party leader refused to recant, he was removed
from his position and expelled. In 1945, following Winston's
release from the army and the party's reconstitution, he was
appointed to the National Committee of the CPUSA. Two years later
he was chosen as organizational secretary, making him one of
the party's top leaders.

 Winston was thus one of eleven party leaders arrested in 1948
and charged with violating the Smith Act, a sedition law passed
by Congress in 1940. Tried on charges of conspiring "to teach
and advocate the overthrow" of the U.S. government by "force
and violence," Winston and the other defendants were convicted
in 1949 after a rowdy trial in New York where Winston was one
of several to draw contempt citations for his conduct.

 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Smith
Act in Dennis v. the U.S. in 1951. Convinced that fascism was
imminent in the United States, concerned that the party's leadership
might never emerge from prison, and determined to preserve its
top cadres, the CPUSA decided to organize an underground apparatus.
Four of the Smith Act defendants, including Winston, jumped bail
and went into hiding. Winston managed to evade an intensive FBI
manhunt and remained underground for nearly five years. At first,
he lived in Brooklyn. Early in 1952, he moved to the Chicago
area, traveling disguised as a clergyman. He lived with sympathetic
families, used false names, and tried to remain inconspicuous.
Two of the fugitives were arrested by 1953. Winston and Gil Green,
the other National Board member still at large, met occasionally
to discuss party policy. During this period Winston wrote for
the party press under the name Frederick Hastings.

 As the issue of communism lost its potency, the fugitives began
to discuss surrendering. In March 1956, with Joseph R. McCarthy
censured by the U.S. Senate and their co-defendants emerging
from prison, Winston and Green, the last remaining party leaders
still in hiding, surrendered to federal authorities; in addition
to the five-year sentence for violating the Smith Act, Winston
faced an additional three years for jumping bail.

 Sent to the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, Winston
began to suffer from headaches and dizzy spells in 1958. Not
until 1960 was he diagnosed as having a brain tumor. In February
he was sent to Montefiore Hospital in New York; while the tumor
was removed, he lost his sight. His illness and charges that
federal authorities had mismanaged his health care led to a campaign
for his release that drew support from such prominent anticommunists
as Reinhold Niebuhr and A. Philip Randolph. President John F.
Kennedy granted him executive clemency in June 1961. Following
his releas

Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Victor]

Right
and I'd like to see someone wear "The coat".  Must be a truly mystical 
experience.

Oudeyis
- Original Message - 
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx 
andthe thinkers he inspired'" 

Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 15:43
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst





Victor


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
beenabstracted 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.


CB: Sounds like the difference between " the coat" and "a coat".




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.


CB: "The thing" , for Marx , is to _change_ the world. "Things" are
importantly activity, world changing activity, not just the objects that
result. The thing is practical-critical _activity_.  Goods and _services_
constitute things.

^


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

^

CB: Object and activity. Objective reality _is_ human activity, practice,
especially, for Marxists.

^^^

- 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.


CB: Objects _and_ activity; an "object" is the human activity in relation 
to
it. Objects: "the ball", "the rock", "the tree", "the star". These _are_ 
the
human activity in relaion to them. "A ball" is an human activity in 
relation

to it.

Labor is activity. The resulting commodity is the labor in it or in 
relation

to it.

^^

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.

^^
CB: Yes, the boundary between the  ideal and real is itself objective to 
the
individual, and both the ideal and real are taken into the consciousness 
of
the individual consciousness, as well. So , the boundary is both inside 
and

outside of the individual.



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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Victor]

Indeed.
It was Hegel that first made the critique of metaphysical synthesis as 
presented by Kant.  For Kant an antinomy could only be resolved by a choice; 
e.g. in the antinomy presented by the concept of the idea as materialized 
consciousness Kant would insist that we either choose to regard the idea as 
in the head as purely subjective thought or as outside the head in the 
material representations of ideas in language, logic, etc.  Marx following 
Hegel and Lenin and Ilyenkov following Marx entirely rejected Kant's 
metaphysical synthetics and the formal logic that underwrites it.  They 
regarded the antinomy, i.e. the contradiction, as the kernel of the process 
of what Ilyenkov calls ascension from the abstract to the concrete.


By determining the formulation that unites the contradictory elements of an 
antinomy into a single notion (inevitably a more complex or more concrete 
notion of the abstractions of the contradictory notions that comprise it). 
For example, direct commodity exchange involves the unity of two kinds of 
valuation of goods, that of the consumer who is buying the good's use value 
and that of the seller/producer who is selling the investment of labour time 
in production of the good, its exchange value or value. The resolution of 
these two bases in valuation of the good is a concept of universal value 
measured in abstract labour and represented by a single commodity (usually 
precious metals) that represents universal value and describes the value of 
specific goods in accordance to their equivalent value in gold or silver, 
i.e. their price.


Incidentally, a dialectical synthesis does not "eliminate" the antinomy, 
rather it "kicks it upstairs" where it usually reappears in a more complex 
and concrete form.  Thus the establishment of universal value only resolves 
the contradiction between the purchaser's and the seller's evaluation of 
goods on the abstract level of immediate exchange.  The contradiction 
reappears on more concrete levels in the periodic maladjustments between 
capitalist systems of industrial production and the marketability of goods 
(depressions, business cycles etc.).

Oudeyis

- Original Message - 
From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx 
andthe thinkers he inspired'" 

Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 15:18
Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst




And to be more precise, Oudeyis, I think the point below is that the 
matter

of deriving the materiality discussed here based on what is "outside" of a
concrete individual's head, and a concrete individual's interaction with 
her

non-human "outside" is a main error of positivism and much bourgeois
thought.


"...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 "

This is a materiality that each individual must take account of, but on 
the

other hand each individual must become aware that this is not the main
boundary between materiality and ideality for that person _as an 
individual_

, either. The individual's world is very social as well, though there is
physiology.


Charles



CB
I recall a lecturer on S. Freud that asserted and successfully 
demonstrated

that psychoanalysis is a social psychology.
Oudeyis





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 -



^
CB: This distinction between inside and outside of the individual's head
is
what I was getting at in saying all psychology is social psychology.

^





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[Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Charles Brown]

Steve Gabosch 



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."

^
CB: How about in the relationship between the representations and
represented ? Ideality is a relationship.

^^^

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.

^^
CB: Value is an abtraction. It has no concrete location.

^^

c) what is the "essence" of ideality?
I would answer c) with "human activity."  You answer c) with
"representation."

^^
CB: Doesn't ideality guide human action, as imagination guides the human
laborer unlike the spider or ant or chimp ?

^

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.

^
CB: The esssence of an abtraction, would be its definition in symbols.

^^

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.

^^^
CB: Abstract labor represents the concrete labor ?



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.

^
CB: When an idea grips masses it becomes a material force, can make cultural
artifacts ?

^^^

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.

Thoughts?

- Steve




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[Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Charles Brown]

Victor 


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
beenabstracted 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.


CB: Sounds like the difference between " the coat" and "a coat".




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.


CB: "The thing" , for Marx , is to _change_ the world. "Things" are
importantly activity, world changing activity, not just the objects that
result. The thing is practical-critical _activity_.  Goods and _services_
constitute things.

^

> 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

^

CB: Object and activity. Objective reality _is_ human activity, practice,
especially, for Marxists.

^^^

 - 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.


CB: Objects _and_ activity; an "object" is the human activity in relation to
it. Objects: "the ball", "the rock", "the tree", "the star". These _are_ the
human activity in relaion to them. "A ball" is an human activity in relation
to it.

Labor is activity. The resulting commodity is the labor in it or in relation
to it.

^^

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.

^^
CB: Yes, the boundary between the  ideal and real is itself objective to the
individual, and both the ideal and real are taken into the consciousness of
the individual consciousness, as well. So , the boundary is both inside and
outside of the individual.



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[Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Charles Brown]

Victor 

> 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.


CB: When an idea grips masses ( is social), it becomes a material force.



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[Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst

[Charles Brown]

 And to be more precise, Oudeyis, I think the point below is that the matter
of deriving the materiality discussed here based on what is "outside" of a
concrete individual's head, and a concrete individual's interaction with her
non-human "outside" is a main error of positivism and much bourgeois
thought.


 "...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 "

This is a materiality that each individual must take account of, but on the
other hand each individual must become aware that this is not the main
boundary between materiality and ideality for that person _as an individual_
, either. The individual's world is very social as well, though there is
physiology.


Charles



CB
I recall a lecturer on S. Freud that asserted and successfully demonstrated 
that psychoanalysis is a social psychology.
Oudeyis




> 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 -
>
>
> ^
> CB: This distinction between inside and outside of the individual's head 
> is
> what I was getting at in saying all psychology is social psychology.
>
> ^
>



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