Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst (response to arrowlessness)
At 12:00 PM 7/5/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Steve, I really do not have enough time to devote to answering this message as it deserves. So please excuse the briefness of my responses. No problem at all. I am happy to let that response be the last major word on this discussion for now, which we can certainly return to when time permits. As for the final question asked, What say you comrade? I say, thank you for the stimulating discussion, we'll get back to these important and stimulating topics as time goes on. Below are some passages that stand out for me as excellent thinking and research points for me to work with. Victor suggests, asks, points out: * that I am ... arguing that all reflective thought is ideal ... * So what do you call reality? Ilyenkov is quite clear as to what he calls reality ... * What is virgin materiality? If by virgin materiality you mean that part of nature men have yet to have contacted ... * Sorry, but I'm afraid your argument that thought as a function of practice and thought as received social wisdom are both ideal are not acceptable to me or to Ilyenkov. * Your views that all reflective thought is ideal is much more consistent with the views of Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer and more recently of Habermas than with Ilyenkov ... * ... you've determined that all human consciousness is ideal ... * Wow! I wrote the previous paragraph before reading this one ... * ... you are confirming my description of your argument as more consistent with Critical Theory than with EVI's Marxist-Leninism. * The identification of scientific theory as an integral part of the ideal is an invention of Lukacs that was expanded by his Critical Theorist epigones. * At no point does Ilyenkov describe scientific work as ideal. * What say you comrade? Oudeyis I say: thanks again, - Steve end ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst (response toarrowlessness)
Steve, Enjoyed it immensely. Also helped considerably in finalizing (if that's possible) the concepts I've been working with. Must do it again some time. Regards, Oudeyis - 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: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 13:36 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst (response toarrowlessness) At 12:00 PM 7/5/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Steve, I really do not have enough time to devote to answering this message as it deserves. So please excuse the briefness of my responses. No problem at all. I am happy to let that response be the last major word on this discussion for now, which we can certainly return to when time permits. As for the final question asked, What say you comrade? I say, thank you for the stimulating discussion, we'll get back to these important and stimulating topics as time goes on. Below are some passages that stand out for me as excellent thinking and research points for me to work with. Victor suggests, asks, points out: * that I am ... arguing that all reflective thought is ideal ... * So what do you call reality? Ilyenkov is quite clear as to what he calls reality ... * What is virgin materiality? If by virgin materiality you mean that part of nature men have yet to have contacted ... * Sorry, but I'm afraid your argument that thought as a function of practice and thought as received social wisdom are both ideal are not acceptable to me or to Ilyenkov. * Your views that all reflective thought is ideal is much more consistent with the views of Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse and Horkheimer and more recently of Habermas than with Ilyenkov ... * ... you've determined that all human consciousness is ideal ... * Wow! I wrote the previous paragraph before reading this one ... * ... you are confirming my description of your argument as more consistent with Critical Theory than with EVI's Marxist-Leninism. * The identification of scientific theory as an integral part of the ideal is an invention of Lukacs that was expanded by his Critical Theorist epigones. * At no point does Ilyenkov describe scientific work as ideal. * What say you comrade? Oudeyis I say: thanks again, - Steve end ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
CB, Good points. The one concerning the development of language as a instrument of reproduction is particularly interesting. I've been playing around with the idea of a dialectical prehistory/history of information systems as the development of reproductive systems (starting with the highly abstract systems of subcellular organic reproduction to the very very concrete forms of learned human communication systems). Maybe some day. You are of course correct all human learning is always thoroughly saturated with talk and language. BUT, 1. We tend to exaggerate the importance of linguistic communication or at least the importance of developed language in linguistic communication.[Noam Chomsky is the paragon of this. He's so impressed by the size and complexity of the syntactic analytical system he developed to explain the formation of well-formed sentences that he despairs of men's ability to learn and use it]. Vygotsky among many others, especially novelists and playwrights, have noted just how little a vocabulary (much less syntax) is needed to communicate complex information. Personally I've had quite a few fairly rich conversations consisting almost entirely of the F and S words. Looking over some of the recordings made by discourse analysts like Potter and Antaki it appears in many cases that in elaborating of the language tool man has developed an A Bomb to crack a walnut. Then too, much practical learning cannot really be carried out by verbal description. For Ethiopian farmers one of the greatest hurdles for learning to use the computer was simply to learn how to use the mouse and keyboard. The physical activity, that is, the logic they picked up right away. It was almost impossible to describe to them just how hard to hit the keys or how far to jiggle the mouse. The best tool was demonstration, often with the instructor guiding the student's hand with his own. I've also taught sketching and while there are a good many interesting tricks for teaching people how to see and translate what they see into marks on paper and so on, almost none are verbal. It seems to me that our theories of language use are not nearly concrete enough to accurately explain many features of actual language use and its role in social life. 2. When we compare human information transmission systems with those of other life forms, we tend to use our own highly developed communication systems as the typical human system. It isn't really very typical at all. In the some 200,000 years of H. Sapiens's existence on the planet, his technological array only began to show serious signs of surpassing that of his close relatives about 60,000 years ago. Settled human life begins maybe 10,000 years ago while writing is no older than about 5,000 years ago. Almost all the fancy equipment we now use to communicate with and by is less than 100 years of age. But this is not all. The repertory of human artefacts remains disappointingly small (for most men) until up to nearly modern times. The probability is that men had much less to say to each other than we are accustomed to and much of what they had to communicate could better (see above) by means other than language. The point is that the development of modern human information systems and the rich collection of subjects of interest is the product of the dialectical development of human culture from very simple origins to its present developed state. It is quite likely that we would find that the great gulf of language and culture that separates men from the more developed animals was far less evident for the first 120,000 years of human development and only now appears to be absolutely insurmountable. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2005 20:03 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst Victor : CB, Continued from last message. First, let's not forget that a lot of human learning is human see human do. And some of the things we learn this way are as complex as ant-fishing with a straw.[it's actually quite a complicated affair to get it just right. I've tried it though I drew a line at eating the ants.] CB: Yes, but, the human see-do learning is always thoroughly saturated with talk and language. Imagine trying to teach all the human see-do stuff restricted to pantomime. It is not close. Symbols allow the imitation of the actions of dead people; imitation without direct observation. ^^^ According to Vygotsky, a truly creative relation to cultural conventions (the development of conceptual speech) is a rather late stage in the development of the child. CB: Most of the symbols are preexisting to anyone individual. The creativity is not the critical issue, rather the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
CB, Sorry for the delay. Getting through a real tough passage in my rewrite on Ilyenkov. No argument with you concerning the tool using activities of non- and proto-human life forms. I would distinguish between their toolmaking and that of men , as I understand you do, by the universal relevance of tool making and using for all human life activity. All human activity is instrumentally enhanced if not enabled. While I agree that ideality is the essence of tradition, it appears to me that primitive and particularistic manifestations of ideality precede its universality in human social activity. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 16:49 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst Victor: I'm not sure of it either. However, it appears to me that we can distinguish social labour, direct cooperation, from characteristically human labour, that is social labour that is special since it involves the production and use of tools for realization of material social goals. This distinction allows us to talk about the simplest and most abstract kinds of ideality as being pre or proto-human. It also appears to me that labour has to be social before it can be instrumental, i.e. involve the development of social practices of making and use of tools. ^^^ CB: If I might argue with you comradely here. I would say that though toolmaking and use are famously characterized as uniquely human, there are examples of chimps and other animals using tools. The qualitative aspect of instrumental action is not unique to humans. Humans are unique in the scale and complexity of their toolmaking and use, which is possible because ideality allows a toolmaking _tradition_ to develop. ^^^ Of course once men make and use tools they expand their labour practice and thereby the inventory of objectified activities embodied in idealities, and thereby make culture a universal of human life activity ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :BakhurstVictor
CB, Continued from last message. First, let's not forget that a lot of human learning is human see human do. And some of the things we learn this way are as complex as ant-fishing with a straw. [it's actually quite a complicated affair to get it just right. I've tried it though I drew a line at eating the ants.] According to Vygotsky, a truly creative relation to cultural conventions (the development of conceptual speech) is a rather late stage in the development of the child. Second, Ilyenkov sees the origins of ideality in social labour, i.e. direct cooperation, rather than in tool using. If I were to search for examples of pre-human ideality I would look for collective work activity rather than tool use. A number of pre-human predators; female lions and house cats, canines of all sorts, and chimpanzee males engage in cooperative chase and ambush of game (and in the case of chimpanzees of each other). Chase and ambush of living game is a complex and very fluid activity requiring considerable coordination between participants if it's to succeed, and could conceivably be a basis for the establishment of ideal forms (rules or principles of action designed to collectively achieve communal goals). It's also possible that collective care and nursing of young characteristic of prides of lionesses and of house cats, most canines and many of the primates might also qualify here. Like pre-human toolmaking and use these primitive ideals would be very abstract and particular to certain kinds of activities and never reach the concreteness and universality of human ideality. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 17:08 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :BakhurstVictor Victor CB: Here we see why the transgenerational transmission of how to make and use tools is the key type of social connection defining humans. There are studies showing that chimps , on their own , int the wild, make and use tools, such as sticks to dig in ant hills. But they don't pass on to the next generation how to do it. But they do or at least the women do: -clip- Actually, we've known for a long time that social groups of monkeys and apes develop special cultural traits that are intergenerational for the group and distinctive from those of other groups. This was first noticed by Japanese researchers into the behaviour of different groups of Japanese Macaques. Some groups wash their food others don't, some bath in the hot spring waters while others don't enter the water at all and so on. Since then animal ethologists in Africa and Asia have been mapping the cultural traditions of our anthropoid brothers. Clearly, monkeys and apes do have cultural traditions that are passed between generations, but it is much less sure that these traditions are anything more than particular features of an otherwise non-cultural array of practices. What distinguishes human culture from that of other creatures is its universality, i.e. man's absolute dependence on culture to learn how to behave at all. ^ CB: Yes, however, what apes and monkeys have is monkey see monkey do traditions, i.e. imitation. They don't have culture, because they don't have symbolling or _ideality_ . They are limited in what can be passed on to new generations by what can be taught through imitation. The distinguishing characteristic of humans is ideality which allows a qualitatively different passage of experiences between generations. ^^ In truth, we should expect that ideality (and tool making) would appear historically, first, as a particularity, an abstracted individual feature of the universal life activity that preceeded it, rather than as a full-blown universal as it is for modern humans. In principle, the development of a universal such as social labour, tool making and commodity production should first appear as an individual case, become a particular class of phenomena as it expands beyond the individual case (as it does for learned termite fishing among chimpanzees) and only become a universal when it becomes the way things are done by everyone. Ideality is necessary for this transgenerational transmission to become as efficient and extensive as it has among humans. Thus , imagination ( ideality) , planning, focus for days, weeks, years at a time on the same goal and purpose, all based on ideality and imagination, are the distinguishing characteristics of human labor, not tool use. On the other hand, the individual hunter or laborer's imagination and ideality contains so much information because many others are able to put info into the system or ideological system or cultural tradition that makes that imagination. Notice for example, that the significance of upright posture for
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I've not had time to keep up with your ongoing debate on Ilyenkov. Since you are apparently preparing something for publication, I hope you will apprise us of the finished product. This line of enquiry, it seems to me, is much more important than most philosophical projects being undertaken. I have yet to address our last round on science as labor. I'll have to review the last few posts so that I can state my misgivings more clearly. I seem to be suffering from the aftereffects of the Stalinist equation of science with production. At 09:03 AM 6/27/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Steve and Ralph, Thanks for all the help. Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I am responding to a 6/22/2005 post from Victor, which I quote from. The quote below is a good example of where I think Victor gets Ilyenkov wrong 180 degrees. In the general section of Ilyenkov's 1977 essay The Concept of the Ideal that Victor quotes from, I believe Ilyenkov is making just the opposite point that Victor attributes to him. Victor quotes Ilyenkov: Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: 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. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) Victor comments: The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe and the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. Victor says the delimitation that Ilyenkov makes (I am adding ...'s to make Victor's complex sentence a little more readable) can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe ... and ... the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. But this is decidedly *not* the distinction Ilyenkov makes. The essential discussion we are having here is over this question: where, precisely, is the boundary between ideality and materiality? Victor draws the boundary between socially learned concepts, on one hand, and conceptualizing practical activity/carrying out practical activity/the consequences of practical activity - on the other. Ilyenkov draws a very different distinction. Ilyenkov is investigating the distinction - and he refers to this as the main problem of philosophy - between the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from this. I believe I can draw on Ilyenkov, and: a) show where Ilyenkov makes his distinction between the ideal and the real and b) demonstrate that Victor is committing the very idealist error that Ilyenkov criticizes Hegel and Bogdanov for making. In the essay The Concept of the Ideal, my annotations offer the subtitles Hegel's Concept of the Ideal to paragraphs 45-49, The Secret Twist of Idealism to paragraphs 50-53, and The Distinction Between the Ideal and the Real to paragraphs 54-57. Interestingly, my reading of Victor's writings on the question of the ideal, such as in the quote above, is that his concept of the ideal is much closer to Hegel's than Ilyenkov's or Marx's, he is actually performing the same kind of secret twist of idealism that Ilyenkov attributes to Hegel and others, and Victor's distinction or boundary between the ideal and the real is not consistent with Ilyenkov's. None of my opinions or claims, of course, negate Victor's good advice and inspiration to me to study and make copious notes about the other books Ilyenkov has in English, as well as study relevant writings by Marx, Lenin, and Hegel. Nor do my philosophically sharp criticisms of what I perceive as erroneous interpretations by Victor of Ilyenkov's theory of the ideal take away from the respect and admiration I have for Victor's many intellectual accomplishments, which I have been privileged to learn much from in various internet venues. In all worthwhile discussions, there are points where it is best
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
This is going to take a little time, you raised some heavy questions here. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 17:17 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst At 02:12 PM 6/22/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Hegel regards objectification as simply the alienation of spirit in the object. The ideal itself is the alienated spirit that has become a universal through the mediation of language. True, I've not addressed the problem of whether Hegel regarded labour activity (transformation of the ideal as consciousness joined with language forms by its expression in labour activity) but if I recall correctly he does not really concern himself with this problem. The question of the effect, if any, of labour activity on the ideal certainly does not appear in the Logic. Marx in his 1844 Critique of Hegelian Philosophy takes Hegel to task for regarding the nature that becomes the subject of logos as the abstracted nature of theory rather than the material nature external to intellect. It is however an interesting question, and I would appreciate any additional information on this. Meanwhile I'll do some investigation on my own. I can't help you answer my question, but it _is_ the question (Hegel's specific view of labor activity) which you did not clearly address in your exposition. Hegel wrote quite a bit on labour, but it appears that most of his commentary on the subject is in regards to its social rather than epistemological role. The master-slave stuff from the Phenomenology and his discourses on the Korporations and such in his Philosophy of Right. See Ashton's interesting discussion on the subject in the MIA: www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/ashton.htm Hegel's discussion of the relation of the ideal to life is about as close as one can get to a Hegelian epistemology of the relation of the ideal to the practical: Interestingly, but expectedly, the resemblances and differences between Hegel and Marx's concepts of the practical are exactly paralleled in those of their respective concepts of the ideal. Ilyenkov describes Marx as adopting the meaning or essence of Hegel's ideal but revising Hegel's concept of ideality: 61. In Capital Marx quite consciously uses the term ideal in this formal meaning that it was given by Hegel, and not in the sense in which it was used by the whole pre-Hegelian tradition, including Kant, although the philosophical-theoretical interpretation of the range of phenomena which in both cases is similarly designated ideal is diametrically opposed to its Hegelian interpretation. The meaning of the term ideal in Marx and Hegel is the same, but the concepts, i.e., the ways of understanding this same meaning are profoundly different. After all, the word concept in dialectically interpreted logic is a synonym for understanding of the essence of the matter, the essence of phenomena which are only outlined by a given term; it is by no means a synonym for the meaning of the term, which may be formally interpreted as the sum-total of attributes of the phenomena to which the term is applied. Concept of the Ideal 1977) Hegel describes the ideal as the reification of human activity, i.e. the embodiment of activity - pure activity, pure form-creating activityin the form of a thing. Hegel's explanation of the relation of activity to its objective form is, of course, his theory of activities as a function conceptualised (objective) social ideas that describe and circumscribe ethical social life. To explain how concepts become material activity Hegel describes the production of activity as the consequences of the operations of consciousness and will. Consciousness and will are the transcendental pattern of the psyche and the will that realises the ideal form, the ideal form being the law that guides man's consciousness and will, as the objectively compulsory pattern of consciously willed activity. While Marx adopts the essence of the Hegelian ideal as the embodiment or reification of activity as social practice, he regards the ideal as a product of activity rather than as its law and guide. Take for example the ideal concept of Value: Value-form is understood in Capital precisely as the reified form (represented as, or representing, the thing, the relationship of things) of social human life activity. Directly it does present itself to us as the physically palpable embodiment of something other, but this other cannot be some physically palpable matter... in the sphere of economic activity this substance was, naturally, decoded as labour, as man's physical labour transforming the physical body of nature, while value became realised labour, the embodied act of labour.Ilyenkov 1977 Par. 95, 96). The identical difference characterises the distinction between Hegel's concept of practicality and that of Marx. While Marx adopts the essence of practicality
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
- 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 26, 2005 12:40 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst I am responding to a 6/22/2005 post from Victor, which I quote from. The quote below is a good example of where I think Victor gets Ilyenkov wrong 180 degrees. In the general section of Ilyenkov's 1977 essay The Concept of the Ideal that Victor quotes from, I believe Ilyenkov is making just the opposite point that Victor attributes to him. Victor quotes Ilyenkov: Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: 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. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) Victor comments: The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe and the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. Victor says the delimitation that Ilyenkov makes (I am adding ...'s to make Victor's complex sentence a little more readable) can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe ... and ... the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. But this is decidedly *not* the distinction Ilyenkov makes. The essential discussion we are having here is over this question: where, precisely, is the boundary between ideality and materiality? Victor draws the boundary between socially learned concepts, on one hand, and conceptualizing practical activity/carrying out practical activity/the consequences of practical activity - on the other. Ilyenkov draws a very different distinction. Ilyenkov is investigating the distinction - and he refers to this as the main problem of philosophy - between the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from this. I believe I can draw on Ilyenkov, and: a) show where Ilyenkov makes his distinction between the ideal and the real and b) demonstrate that Victor is committing the very idealist error that Ilyenkov criticizes Hegel and Bogdanov for making. In the essay The Concept of the Ideal, my annotations offer the subtitles Hegel's Concept of the Ideal to paragraphs 45-49, The Secret Twist of Idealism to paragraphs 50-53, and The Distinction Between the Ideal and the Real to paragraphs 54-57. Interestingly, my reading of Victor's writings on the question of the ideal, such as in the quote above, is that his concept of the ideal is much closer to Hegel's than Ilyenkov's or Marx's, he is actually performing the same kind of secret twist of idealism that Ilyenkov attributes to Hegel and others, and Victor's distinction or boundary between the ideal and the real is not consistent with Ilyenkov's. It's not enough simply to say that Victor is making the same error as Hegel and Bogdanov. You have to show it to be so. What does Ilyenkov actually say about Hegel and Bogdanov? 49. In other words, Hegel includes in the concept of the ideal everything that another representative of idealism in philosophy
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
This 6/26 post by Victor seems like a good stopping place for the moment - I need to put our discussion about ideality aside for just a little while to tend to other projects, but I am certainly interested. I will follow up. Victor is perfectly correct, I must show what I claim. BTW, for anyone trying to follow this discussion, two different essays by Ilyenkov are quoted in Victor's post, both available on the internet at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/index.htm The main essay Victor and I have been debating interpretations of is: The Concept of the Ideal http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/ideal/ideal.htm This essay appeared in the book Problems of Dialectical Materialism; Progress Publishers, 1977 and was scanned by Andy Blunden. The numbering both Victor and I have been using refers to the sequence of 142 paragraphs in that essay. In Victor's 6/26 post, he quotes from paragraphs 49, 50 and 51. I have an important side point to bring up about this essay. In my scrutiny of this on-line version, the only version I have, I believe there are some scanning errors and possibly some original translation errors to contend with. There is also some reason to wonder if the original Russian that the translation was based on may also contain editorial errors. In other words, this version must be read with caution, and if something does not make sense, it may not be Ilyenkov's original writing. I bring this up because there are a handful of places in the essay where publishing errors like these seem to contribute to confusion over what Ilyenkov was really saying. In his 6/26 post Victor also quotes Ilyenkov using paragraph numbers 57, 58, 59, 60. However, these are from a different essay - chapter 8 in DIALECTICAL LOGIC (1974), Part Two Problems of the Marxist-Leninist Theory of Dialectics 8: The Materialist Conception of Thought as the Subject Matter of Logic http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay8.htm The scanned book is Dialectical Logic, Essays on its History and Theory; Progress Publishers, 1977; English translation 1977 by H. Campbell Creighton; Transcribed: Andy Blunden; HTML Markup: Andy Blunden. BTW, these paragraphs (found on pages 285-288) are from the same essay Victor mentioned on 5/26 and I quoted from on 5/30, and which were discussed a little on this list. The question of the ideal is a major topic of this essay and I agree with Victor that it should be discussed in conjunction with the Concept of the Ideal essay when we take this topic up again. The philosophical work we are doing here is to try to untangle the ideal and the material, closely studying Ilyenkov's work on this complex question in doing so. In the process, it seems we should also seek to keep untangled which citation by our philosopher-teacher we are talking about. :-)) Best, ~ Steve end of my post ___ At 07:32 PM 6/26/2005 +0200, Oudeyis (Victor) wrote: - 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 26, 2005 12:40 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst I am responding to a 6/22/2005 post from Victor, which I quote from. The quote below is a good example of where I think Victor gets Ilyenkov wrong 180 degrees. In the general section of Ilyenkov's 1977 essay The Concept of the Ideal that Victor quotes from, I believe Ilyenkov is making just the opposite point that Victor attributes to him. Victor quotes Ilyenkov: Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: 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. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) Victor comments: The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
As I see it, your clarifications are even more nonsensical than your original statements. Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and the real. the representation of scientific knowledge involves hijacking the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. Utter nonsense! You started out with something original to say and now you're sabotaging your own efforts with this gibberish. At 10:46 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 10:17 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst What in bloody hell does this mean? At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the idea as a reflection on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. - Sorry, wrote this in a hurry. It should read: Scientific knowledge is represented in the form of ideas, but unlike the ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and the real. That is to say, in Science the idea is hijacked to formulate theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. -- This should be rewritten to read: That is, the representation of scientific knowledge involves hijacking the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I am confused by this beyond the reasonably clear first and third sentences of the first paragraph and the first sentence of the second paragraph. At 07:51 PM 6/20/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: 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 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Comments to selected extracts below At 01:43 PM 6/19/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: 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. Fascinating. .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. I can see the Hegelian view that the empirical world is a materialization of Geist, but does Hegel make this specific claim about human labor? 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. OK, but is Hegel's view really contravene your characterization of labor? 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) Fascinating. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
The originals were certainly rubbish and needed revision. Your objections to the revisions need to be explained. - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 10:11 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst As I see it, your clarifications are even more nonsensical than your original statements. Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and the real. This is pure Ilyenkov. He uses this argument to explain how ethical/cultural descriptions are given the status of statements on Nature. For example a statement that nature provides man with a natural calendar in the yearly solar and lunar cycles, a natural compass in the North star and a clock in the revolution of the zodiac and the daily changes of position of the sun are all pseudo-scientific statements about nature that accord to humanly created instruments the status of natural phenomena. On the one hand they accord to nature the tool-making faculty of man and on the other anthropomorphize nature imparting to it the purposes of men. Paragraph 53: It is this fact, incidentally, that explains the persistent survival of such semantic substitutions; indeed, when we are talking about nature, we are obliged to make use of the available language of natural science, the language of science with its established and generally understood meanings. It is this, specifically, which forms the basis of the arguments of logical positivism, which quite consciously identifies nature with the language in which people talk and write about nature. Paragraph 54: 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. (Ilyenkov The Concept of the Ideal 1977) The delimitation of what Ilyenkov calls the whole socially organised world of intellectual culture and the real world as it exists outside and apart from its expression in these socially legitimised forms of experience. can only be based on the distinction between the socially learned and confirmed concepts or ideas of the tribe and the concepts formulated by reflecting on practical material activity, i.e. labour activity: the operations carried out, the physical and material response of the instruments and material of production to these activities and finally the effectivity of the operations relative to their purposes. the representation of scientific knowledge involves hijacking the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. Let's put it this way. When we produce scientific theory the rational process for reflecting upon labour activity, i.e. the dialectical process and the tools we use to describe the outcomes of thought to others, i.e. language forms are exactly the same used by the idealist philosopher in his investigation and proclaimations concerning the ethical life and by the theologian in his construction and revelation of the true nature of god. The essential difference is in the subject of our rational activity and, social expression. Ilyenkov (and I suggest Marx as well) argue that the ideal originates as a tool for regulation of social life and only later is appropriated (hijacked may be too strong a word) to the purposes of describing material reality (labour activity). Does that help? Utter nonsense! You started out with something original to say and now you're sabotaging your own efforts with this gibberish. At 10:46 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 10:17 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst What in bloody hell does this mean? At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I've isolated the difficult passages and commented on them below. - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 10:16 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst I am confused by this beyond the reasonably clear first and third sentences of the first paragraph and the first sentence of the second paragraph. At 07:51 PM 6/20/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: 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. You're right, 'representations' should be changed to replications. My problem here was how to respond to Bakhurst's argument that artefacts are ideal representations. 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. Less than crystal clear, but in essence correct. The first part the general model of historical development refers to the serious difficulties reconciling synchronic and diachronic theories of culture history common to the whole body of social theory (including orthodox Marxism). The second part of the sentence specifies that the problem with these theories is that they fail to distinguish, as does Ilyenkov between ethical theory and natural scientific theory or in other words theory regarding correct social practice and theory regarding effective labour activity. 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. 'Adaptively' is a typo it should be adaptivity. Adaptation is a dialectic process in which past historical developments are sublated in the creative response of labour activity to changing natural conditions. Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Comments on the commentary included below. - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 10:25 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst Comments to selected extracts below At 01:43 PM 6/19/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: 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. Fascinating. .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. I can see the Hegelian view that the empirical world is a materialization of Geist, but does Hegel make this specific claim about human labor? Hegel regards objectification as simply the alienation of spirit in the object. The ideal itself is the alienated spirit that has become a universal through the mediation of language. True, I've not addressed the problem of whether Hegel regarded labour activity (transformation of the ideal as consciousness joined with language forms by its expression in labour activity) but if I recall correctly he does not really concern himself with this problem. The question of the effect, if any, of labour activity on the ideal certainly does not appear in the Logic. Marx in his 1844 Critique of Hegelian Philosophy takes Hegel to task for regarding the nature that becomes the subject of logos as the abstracted nature of theory rather than the material nature external to intellect. It is however an interesting question, and I would appreciate any additional information on this. Meanwhile I'll do some investigation on my own. 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. OK, but is Hegel's view really contravene your characterization of labor? In respect to the relation between reason and nature for sure (see above). While it is true that the laws and principles that govern material practice directed towards the realization of the objectives of labour activity are abstract theoretical representations they or at least their application are subject to the test of nature which is not dependent solely on human knowledge but also involves phenomena that is entirely indifferent to the intellectual creations of men. Thus theory, even natural science theory, can never precisely describe actual labour activity if only because the natural conditions confronting labour are in a constant state of change. Thus the natural laws or application of natural laws incorporated into the design of any given labour activity will never be exactly those encountered in the course of actual labour activity. This, by the way, is how Lenin regards Engels theory of freedom and necessity in human activity. Secondly, Engels does not attempt to contrive definitions of freedom and necessity, the kind of scholastic definition with which the reactionary professors (like Avenarius) and their disciples (like Bogdanov) are most concerned. Engels takes the knowledge and will of man, on the one hand, and the necessity of nature, on the other, and instead of giving definitions, simply says that the necessity of nature is primary, and human will and mind secondary. The latter must necessarily and inevitably adapt themselves to the former. Engels regards this as so obvious that he does not waste words explaining his view. It needs the Russian Machians to complain of Engels' general definition of materialism (that nature is primary and mind secondary; remember Bogdanov's perplexity on this point!), and at the same time to regard one of the particular
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
At 02:12 PM 6/22/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Hegel regards objectification as simply the alienation of spirit in the object. The ideal itself is the alienated spirit that has become a universal through the mediation of language. True, I've not addressed the problem of whether Hegel regarded labour activity (transformation of the ideal as consciousness joined with language forms by its expression in labour activity) but if I recall correctly he does not really concern himself with this problem. The question of the effect, if any, of labour activity on the ideal certainly does not appear in the Logic. Marx in his 1844 Critique of Hegelian Philosophy takes Hegel to task for regarding the nature that becomes the subject of logos as the abstracted nature of theory rather than the material nature external to intellect. It is however an interesting question, and I would appreciate any additional information on this. Meanwhile I'll do some investigation on my own. I can't help you answer my question, but it _is_ the question (Hegel's specific view of labor activity) which you did not clearly address in your exposition. In respect to the relation between reason and nature for sure (see above). While it is true that the laws and principles that govern material practice directed towards the realization of the objectives of labour activity are abstract theoretical representations they or at least their application are subject to the test of nature which is not dependent solely on human knowledge but also involves phenomena that is entirely indifferent to the intellectual creations of men. How does this differ from Hegel's view? Hegel as an inheritor of idealist tradition would not express himself this way, but presumably he has a way of accounting for the testing of our subjective notions about nature. Thus theory, even natural science theory, can never precisely describe actual labour activity if only because the natural conditions confronting labour are in a constant state of change. Thus the natural laws or application of natural laws incorporated into the design of any given labour activity will never be exactly those encountered in the course of actual labour activity. This is what bugs me about your conception of scientific theory, which is not about labor activity. I don't like this way of expressing things. This, by the way, is how Lenin regards Engels theory of freedom and necessity in human activity. Secondly, Engels does not attempt to contrive definitions of freedom and necessity, the kind of scholastic definition with which the reactionary professors (like Avenarius) and their disciples (like Bogdanov) are most concerned. Engels takes the knowledge and will of man, on the one hand, and the necessity of nature, on the other, and instead of giving definitions, simply says that the necessity of nature is primary, and human will and mind secondary. The latter must necessarily and inevitably adapt themselves to the former. Engels regards this as so obvious that he does not waste words explaining his view. It needs the Russian Machians to complain of Engels' general definition of materialism (that nature is primary and mind secondary; remember Bogdanov's perplexity on this point!), and at the same time to regard one of the particular applications by Engels of this general and fundamental definition as wonderful and remarkably apt! Thirdly, Engels does not doubt the existence of blind necessity. He admits the existence of a necessity unknown to man. This is quite obvious from the passage just quoted. But how, from the standpoint of the Machians, can man know of the existence of what he does not know? Is it not mysticism, metaphysics, the admission of fetishes and idols, is it not the Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself to say that we know of the existence of an unknown necessity? Had the Machians given the matter any thought they could not have failed to observe the complete identity between Engels' argument on the knowability of the objective nature of things and on the transformation of things-in-themselves into things-for-us, on the one hand, and his argument on a blind, unknown necessity, on the other. The development of con-sciousness in each human individual and the development of the collective knowledge of humanity at large presents us at every step with examples of the transformation of the unknown thing-in-itself into the known thing-for-us, of the transformation of blind, unknown necessity, necessity-in-itself, into the known necessity-for-us. Epistemologically, there is no difference whatever between these two transformations, for the basic point of view in both cases is the same, viz., materialistic, the recognition of the objective reality of the external world and of the laws of external nature, and of the fact that this world and these laws are fully knowable to man but can never be known to him with finality.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
What in bloody hell does this mean? At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the idea as a reflection on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. That is to say, in Science the idea is hijacked to formulate theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
- Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 10:17 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst What in bloody hell does this mean? At 09:32 AM 6/21/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Science is founded as ideas, but unlike Hegel's ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the idea as a reflection on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. - Sorry, wrote this in a hurry. It should read: Scientific knowledge is represented in the form of ideas, but unlike the ideal (which as Marx put it is as nothing else but the form of social activity represented in the thing or conversely the form of human creativity represented as a thing as an object) Science is the representation of reflections on practical labour activity rather than on social activity. Comment: it is the identity of the means of representation of ethics and of science both in conscious thought and in material symbolical form that is the source of confusion regarding the distinction between the ideal and the real. That is to say, in Science the idea is hijacked to formulate theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. -- This should be rewritten to read: That is, the representation of scientific knowledge involves hijacking the mode of representation of ethos and using it to represent theories regarding the universal laws etc. involved in the practical realization of ideas through labour and regarding the relevance of these laws to the work at hand. Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
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' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu 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. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
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. 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. c) what is the essence of ideality? I would answer c) with human activity. You answer c) with representation. 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. 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. 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. 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 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
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
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
as well. Anyway the ideal as objectification of practice is just that imaged or imagined object that Marx describes as the conscious objective of physical sensual labour activity. Marx and certainly Hegel do not describe this objectified practice as a material object, it is the socially originated and endorsed, authorized, sanctioned etc. etc. object of labour as it is manifest in consciousness. The material representation of the ideal is in conventional symbolic forms that have no material resemblance either to the objectified practice, the practice objectified, or to the material products of that practice. It is not the artifacts that represent the activity to which they owe their existence as artifacts but the it is the ideal artefact (in consciousness) that provides the paragon by which the labourer measures the effectiveness of his work. The material artefact certainly has significance to those who recognize its correspondence in form and substance to the imagined ideal, but it cannot ever approach the abstract perfection of the imagined ideal. Remember Pygmalion either Shaw's or the Rain in Spain version. The environment of significance that educates is not that of the material artefacts themselves, but that of the discourse (regarded here broadly) between people. It is through this discourse mediated of course by language that the ideal becomes a consciousness common to the community. Bakhurst's peculiar rendering of the ideal as the material artefact is certainly an original idea. It's reification with a vengeance. Reification that not even the most committed objective idealist dares do. The Hegelians and Neopositivists are quite content to argue that human consciousness is determined by ideality and that human knowledge begins and ends with the customs (understood by them as concepts) of the tribe. Bakhurst has declared that material reality is ideality or, in other words that custom and only custom determines objective reality. What I don't fully understand yet is why Bakhurst agonizes over Ilyenkov's materialism. After all, if ideality is material reality, then being an idealist is being a materialist! I suspect that he's not fully convinced by his own arguments, but maybe you have a better insight. By the way, I'm rewriting the paper I sent you. I've restricted to interpreting how Ilyenkov integrates the ideal into Historical Materialist theory and I think you'll recognize his work in this paper. Thanks for the help. Oudeyis - 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: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 4:30 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst Hi Victor, Interestingly, footnote one in a paper by Lantolf and Thorne that is getting discussed on the xmca list - the paper is at http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/JuneJuly05/LantolfThorne2005.pdfIntroduction, in Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development - has a relevant quote from Bakhurst on the very topic you raise and we are discussing, the relationship of material (natural) objects and ideality. It is from page 183 in Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (1991). from Lantolf and Thorne: footnote 1 David Bakhurst characterizes the production of objective culture this way: [BTW, the quoted Bakhurst sentence begins: To sum up, Ilyenkov holds that ... -sg] '. by acting on natural objects, human beings invest them with a significance or ideal form that elevates them to a new plane of existence. Objects owe their ideality to their incorporation into the aim-oriented life activity of a human community, to their *use*. The notion of significance is glossed in terms of the concept of representation: Artifacts represent the activity to which they owe their existence as artifacts.' (1991: 183). - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
I am not at all up to speed on the German Marxist Sohn-Rethel (please help), but a thought immediately comes to mind on Popper's Three Worlds cosmology. If one ignores the positivist framework of these three worlds invented by Popper and attempts to make them as dynamic and dialectical as possible, one might have some success drawing some rough correspondence between a) Popper's world 1, the world of physical objects and organisms, and Ilyenkov's material world; b) Popper's world 2, of mental activity, and Ilyenkov's will and consciousness; and c) Popper's world 3, the products of the human mind, and Ilyenkov's realm of ideality. But there is still a fundamental difference that makes the two world views completely different. If we are to make Popper's three worlds dynamic and historical, and assign any meaning to his numbering system, then world 1, objects and organisms, must generate an emerging world 2, mental activities, which in turn (in conjunction with each other) generate world 3, the world of products of the human mind. Ilyenkov, however, makes it crystal clear that he sees just the opposite genetic-historic relationship between world 2 and world 3. He argues that it is ideality that generates will and consciousness, not the other way around. See paragraph 76. Also note Ilyenkov's brief mention of Popper in paragraph 77. To expand on Ilyenkov's discussion of the secret twist of idealism, (discussed earlier in the essay the Concept of the Ideal), it is this inversion of ideality, on one hand, and will and consciousness, on the other, that creates a major stumbling block in philosophy and science. When plain materialists and empiricists do this, they are committing an essential idealist error. It is one of the most common errors in bourgeois social science. - Steve At 01:02 PM 6/16/2005 -0400, Ralph wrote: This is the key. How would you compare Ilyenkov's view to that of Sohn-Rethel, or to Popper's 3-worlds theory? At 07:16 PM 6/15/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: .. 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. 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. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Hi Victor, Interestingly, footnote one in a paper by Lantolf and Thorne that is getting discussed on the xmca list - the paper is at http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/JuneJuly05/LantolfThorne2005.pdfIntroduction, in Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development - has a relevant quote from Bakhurst on the very topic you raise and we are discussing, the relationship of material (natural) objects and ideality. It is from page 183 in Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (1991). from Lantolf and Thorne: footnote 1 David Bakhurst characterizes the production of objective culture this way: [BTW, the quoted Bakhurst sentence begins: To sum up, Ilyenkov holds that ... -sg] by acting on natural objects, human beings invest them with a significance or ideal form that elevates them to a new plane of existence. Objects owe their ideality to their incorporation into the aim-oriented life activity of a human community, to their *use*. The notion of significance is glossed in terms of the concept of representation: Artifacts represent the activity to which they owe their existence as artifacts. (1991: 183). - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Nice work! That's just it. Bakhurst confuses the ideal as objectification of practice in consciousness with the material artefact it images. In truth, he also managed to confuse me as well. Anyway the ideal as objectification of practice is just that imaged or imagined object that Marx describes as the conscious objective of physical sensual labour activity. Marx and certainly Hegel do not describe this objectified practice as a material object, it is the socially originated and endorsed, authorized, sanctioned etc. etc. object of labour as it is manifest in consciousness. The material representation of the ideal is in conventional symbolic forms that have no material resemblance either to the objectified practice, the practice objectified, or to the material products of that practice. It is not the artifacts that represent the activity to which they owe their existence as artifacts but the it is the ideal artefact (in consciousness) that provides the paragon by which the labourer measures the effectiveness of his work. The material artefact certainly has significance to those who recognize its correspondence in form and substance to the imagined ideal, but it cannot ever approach the abstract perfection of the imagined ideal. Remember Pygmalion either Shaw's or the Rain in Spain version. The environment of significance that educates is not that of the material artefacts themselves, but that of the discourse (regarded here broadly) between people. It is through this discourse mediated of course by language that the ideal becomes a consciousness common to the community. Bakhurst's peculiar rendering of the ideal as the material artefact is certainly an original idea. It's reification with a vengeance. Reification that not even the most committed objective idealist dares do. The Hegelians and Neopositivists are quite content to argue that human consciousness is determined by ideality and that human knowledge begins and ends with the customs (understood by them as concepts) of the tribe. Bakhurst has declared that material reality is ideality or, in other words that custom and only custom determines objective reality. What I don't fully understand yet is why Bakhurst agonizes over Ilyenkov's materialism. After all, if ideality is material reality, then being an idealist is being a materialist! I suspect that he's not fully convinced by his own arguments, but maybe you have a better insight. By the way, I'm rewriting the paper I sent you. I've restricted to interpreting how Ilyenkov integrates the ideal into Historical Materialist theory and I think you'll recognize his work in this paper. Thanks for the help. Oudeyis - 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: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 4:30 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst Hi Victor, Interestingly, footnote one in a paper by Lantolf and Thorne that is getting discussed on the xmca list - the paper is at http://communication.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/JuneJuly05/LantolfThorne2005.pdfIntroduction, in Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language Development - has a relevant quote from Bakhurst on the very topic you raise and we are discussing, the relationship of material (natural) objects and ideality. It is from page 183 in Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy (1991). from Lantolf and Thorne: footnote 1 David Bakhurst characterizes the production of objective culture this way: [BTW, the quoted Bakhurst sentence begins: To sum up, Ilyenkov holds that ... -sg] '. by acting on natural objects, human beings invest them with a significance or ideal form that elevates them to a new plane of existence. Objects owe their ideality to their incorporation into the aim-oriented life activity of a human community, to their *use*. The notion of significance is glossed in terms of the concept of representation: Artifacts represent the activity to which they owe their existence as artifacts.' (1991: 183). - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Materialist theoreticians. Too bad. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Steve Gabosch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 2:10 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst Hi Victor, If I am getting your first point, that Bakhurst incorrectly takes Diamat as serious theory, then you are speaking to what I referred to (perhaps too softly) as Bakhurst's tendency to see Stalinism as a form of Bolshevism. I see this as a grave error. It sounds like we may have agreement on this. Trotsky's discussion of Stalinism's tendency to play fast and free with theory, using it for its narrow bureaucratic and political needs of the moment, zig-zagging here, there, everywhere, transforming Marxism into an obscurantist dogma, and using the consequent ... manufactured crap ... to justify the work of its massive murder machine and other crimes against the world working classes and toiling masses - seems very relevant here. When it comes to either Lenin or Stalin, Bakhurst is no revolutionary Marxist, and his philosophical analysis indeed suffers. As I think you are pointing out, he does attempt to treat some of the production of the Stalinist apparatus in the ideological department as serious intellectual work. It is not. I have not read Bakhurst's thoughts on the reactionary writings you obviously speak of facetiously. If your point is to compare Mein Kampf etc. with the theoretical work of the Stalinist school of crap - falsification, dogma and tripe - I agree with the comparison, and accept your point. This whole category of reactionary writing - fascist, Stalinist, etc. - can be considered the product of reactionary Bonapartist regimes. It is the opposite of scientific work. (BTW I am not offhand remembering Rosenburg, please refresh). But back to Ilyenkov, I do think Bakhurst, up to a point, grasps and explains Ilyenkov's concept of the ideal, as well as certain central ideas in Vygotsky's program, in a valuable way. Debates we have had on Ilyenkov seem to center on our interpretation of the concept of the ideal, and what ideality actually is (I identify ideality with the general notion of meaning). But I am open to a serious critique of Bakhurst's shortcomings. His liberal/social-democratic view of the relationship of Leninism and Stalinism does give me pause. Perhaps I am being entirely too soft on him. If you like, fire away! - Steve PS Tell us more about your old man! end * 6/8/2005 Victor wrote: Steve, Doesn't it make you wonder? A philosopher who regards the Diamat and all that utter rubbish as theory to be comparable to the works of Marx, Lenin, Deborin and Ilyenkov? It's Propaganda, certainly, theory, never! I'll never forget my old man's colourful reaction to Stalin's perceptive contribution to linguistics, and he didn't even finish High School! Do you think D Bakhurst classifies the classic philosophic work, Mein Kampf, Rosenburg's brilliant meanderings about race and destiny, and Mussolini's masterful contributions to human thought as serious theory? Oudeyis - 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: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 0:36 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! I continue to enjoy this thread, but will be gone for some days and it will probably be a little while after that before I can reengage. I will think about the position Charles and Ralph have taken on the relationship of the brain to the origins of humanity. I think Engel's argument about how labor created the human hand applies also to the brain, language organs, bipedalism, etc. so I will try to make a case for that. And I have been enjoying the exchanges between Ralph and Victor, especially on the issues of the role of practice in science, the nature of scientific thought, and the big question, just what is nature - and can humans really know what nature is in any fundamental ontological sense. I recently read the book by Bakhurst that Victor mentions, and have a different take on it. Briefly put, I disagree with Bakhurst's negative assessment of Leninist politics, his tendency to see Stalinism as a form of Bolshevism, and his general opinion of dialectics. But I agree with many of his insights into Ilyenkov and Vygotsky. Oops, got to get packing. See you all again soon. - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!: domains
CB said: However, analogizing to chemistry and biology, biology does not reduce to chemistry. Human psychology does not reduce to individual physiological psychology. Absolutely. On the first point, yes, biology cannot be reduced to chemistry. On the second point, I also completely agree: in the same way that biology does not reduce to chemistry, psychology does not reduce to physiology. These points, common among anti-reductionist thinkers such as Marxists, fits into a larger framework, in my opinion. I believe that comprehending and explaining the relations between, the structures of, and the functions of domains - and doing so in terms of their real genetic-historical development - are among the great challenges of modern science that I believe dialectical materialism can play a leading role in moving forward. In fact, differences in theoretical outlooks may be explainable by seeing conflicting views as conceptualizing domains differently - seeing the relations, structures, and functions of various domains in different, often opposite, ways. Hence, ontology remains a hot area of dispute and always will as long as different class outlooks remain in mortal struggle and conceptualize the domains of reality in incompatible ways. This argument of course begs for a clear explanation of what a domain is. Very good question! - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! :Bakhurst
Victor, Thanks for the refresher course on Rosenburg, which becomes a history of the Nazi party from 1921. It is always good to be reminded of what happened in Germany. Your comments on Dubrovsky are very interesting, as is your analysis of Bakhurst. I also read your descriptions of ideality with great interest. It would help me if, to start out, (when you have a chance), you would locate some specific quotes from David Bakhurst that illustrate these observations that you make: Bakhurst argues that the material objects themselves are ideal. Bakhurst's identification of the ideal with the material goes beyond idealist hypostasy and takes idealist reification to ridiculous extremes ... Thanks, - Steve At 07:08 PM 6/14/2005 +0200, you wrote: Steve On Alfred Rosenberg: (Born January 12, 1893- Executed October 16, 1946) Alfred Rosenberg was a Nazi ideologist and politician. Rosenberg was one of the earliest members of the German Workers Party (later better known as the NSDAP or the Nazi Party), joining in January 1919; Hitler did not join until October 1919 Rosenberg became editor of the Völkischer Beobachter (National Observer), the Nazi party newspaper, in 1921. In 1923 after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler appointed Rosenberg leader of the Nazi Party, a position the latter occupied until Hitler was released from prison. In 1929, Rosenberg founded the Militant League for German Culture. He became a Reichstag deputy in 1930 and published his book on racial theory The Myth of the Twentieth Century (Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts). He was named leader of the foreign political office of the NSDAP in 1933 but played little actual part in office. In January 1934 he was deputized by Hitler with responsibility for the spiritual and philosophical education of the NSDAP and all related organizations. In 1940 he was made head of the Hohe Schule (literally high school), the Centre of National Socialistic Ideological and Educational Research. Following the invasion of the USSR Rosenberg was appointed head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Alfred Meyer was his deputy and represented him at the Wannsee conference. Rosenberg was captured by Allied troops at the end of the war. He was tried at Nuremberg and found guilty of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace; planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to death and executed with other guilty co-defendants at Nuremberg on the morning of October 16, 1946. He is considered the main author of key Nazi ideological screeds, including its racial theory, Lebensraum, abolition of the Versailles Treaty, and persecution of the Jews and of Christian churches. This article is about race as an intraspecies classification. Just another intellectual grotesque become monster. To separate the beasts from the confused. About Bakhurst: Bakhurst is not only a liberal social-democrat, he's also is a representative of exactly the kind of Logical Positivism, Neo-Kantianism, Neo-positivism, Machism, Empirio-criticism or what have you (the precise name of the movement is more a function of the provenience of the theorist than of his ideas) that motivated Lenin to write Materialism and Emperio-criticism (1908). The irony of Bakhurst's current stature as the interpreter of Ilyenkov is that his kind of thinking is receives more criticism from Ilyenkov than even the objective idealism of Plato and Hegel. Bakhurst, like D. Dubrovsky who Bakhurst wrongly calls a mechanist, just cannot comprehend the essence of dialectical synthesis. Where Ilyenkov describes the essence of ideality as the unity of consciousness (the subjectively imaged object of labour) and material formations (the material symbolic representations that embody and thereby enable transmission of ideal objects), Bakhurst argues that the material objects themselves are ideal. Material objects certainly acquire significance from their resemblance (perhaps correspondence is a better word) to the ideal, but material objects, i.e. physically and sensually perceived objects, as concrete objects are far to diversified to be regarded as ideal forms. After all, diversity is a basic property of being for both Hegelian and Marxist theories of knowledge [check out Hegel's criticism of the identity of A = A for this]. Dubrovsky, like Bakhurst, does not know how to handle dialectical synthesis, and his solution of the ideal/material antinomy is to identify the ideal as pure subjective consciousness. While Bakhurst's identification of the ideal with the material goes beyond idealist hypostasy and takes idealist reification to ridiculous extremes, Dubrovsky's restriction of the ideal to pure subjectivity compels him to regard all conceptualisation as a product of some internal transcendental features common to all human thought processes, i.e. a
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
On CB's first comment on SOCIO-history, I certainly completely agree, and think Ilyenkov would, too. On CB's second comment, about the subject matter of Marxist psychology, I think it is true that a dialectical materialist psychology must begin with sociology and social psychology, and the study of the individual must be based on sociology and social psychology - and as CB I think implies, cannot be developed without it. But in response to the phrase For Marxism there is only social psychology, no individual psychology separate from social psych I want to add the thought that the task of comprehending the individual cannot be *reduced* to the study of social psychology - that the individual constitutes a higher level or domain of complexity and requires a study of the laws of development and so forth associated with that realm - generalizations and observations that are not identical with those of social psychology, and require their own scientific study, etc. An analogy would be the study of chemistry compared with biology. - Steve end At 12:23 PM 6/10/2005 -0400, you wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/31/05 07:48AM from page 283: A consistently materialist conception of thought, of course, alters the approach to the key problems of logic in a cardinal way, in particular to interpretation of the nature of logical categories. Marx and Engels established above all that [the] external world was not given to the individual as it was in itself simply and directly in his contemplation, but only in the course of its being altered by man: and that both the contemplating man himself and the world contemplated were products of history. CB: History here being critically SOCIO-history, i.e. not just the individual doing the logic , but many people. A key Marxist modification of the notion of logic is that it is not the product of an individual brain, or the qualities of an individual organ, but the product of many people's experiences, including people who are dead at the time the particular individual in question is doing the logic. History here refers to people who are history, i.e. dead. Not just practice, but SOCIAL practice. Not just the result of one human's interaction and alteration of nature, but of many people's interaction and alteration of nature. from page 285: Psychological analysis of the act of reflexion of the external world in the individual head therefore cannot be the means of developing logic. The individual thinks only insofar as he has already mastered the general (logical) determinations historically moulded before him and completely independently of him. And psychology as a science does not investigate the development of human culture or civilisation, rightly considering it a premise independent of the individual. CB: does not or does ? For Marxism there is only social psychology, no individual psychology separate from social psych. from page 286-287: In labour (production) man makes one object of nature act on another object of the same nature in accordance with their own properties and laws of existence. Marx and Engels showed that the logical forms of man's action were the consequences (reflection) of real laws of human actions on objects, i.e. of practice in all its scope and development, laws that are independent of any thinking. Practice understood materialistically, appeared as a process in whose movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/31/05 07:48AM from page 283: A consistently materialist conception of thought, of course, alters the approach to the key problems of logic in a cardinal way, in particular to interpretation of the nature of logical categories. Marx and Engels established above all that [the] external world was not given to the individual as it was in itself simply and directly in his contemplation, but only in the course of its being altered by man: and that both the contemplating man himself and the world contemplated were products of history. CB: History here being critically SOCIO-history, i.e. not just the individual doing the logic , but many people. A key Marxist modification of the notion of logic is that it is not the product of an individual brain, or the qualities of an individual organ, but the product of many people's experiences, including people who are dead at the time the particular individual in question is doing the logic. History here refers to people who are history, i.e. dead. Not just practice, but SOCIAL practice. Not just the result of one human's interaction and alteration of nature, but of many people's interaction and alteration of nature. from page 285: Psychological analysis of the act of reflexion of the external world in the individual head therefore cannot be the means of developing logic. The individual thinks only insofar as he has already mastered the general (logical) determinations historically moulded before him and completely independently of him. And psychology as a science does not investigate the development of human culture or civilisation, rightly considering it a premise independent of the individual. CB: does not or does ? For Marxism there is only social psychology, no individual psychology separate from social psych. from page 286-287: In labour (production) man makes one object of nature act on another object of the same nature in accordance with their own properties and laws of existence. Marx and Engels showed that the logical forms of man's action were the consequences (reflection) of real laws of human actions on objects, i.e. of practice in all its scope and development, laws that are independent of any thinking. Practice understood materialistically, appeared as a process in whose movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/31/05 07:48AM from page 283: A consistently materialist conception of thought, of course, alters the approach to the key problems of logic in a cardinal way, in particular to interpretation of the nature of logical categories. Marx and Engels established above all that [the] external world was not given to the individual as it was in itself simply and directly in his contemplation, but only in the course of its being altered by man: and that both the contemplating man himself and the world contemplated were products of history. CB: History here being critically SOCIO-history, i.e. not just the individual doing the logic , but many people. A key Marxist modification of the notion of logic is that it is not the product of an individual brain, or the qualities of an individual organ, but the product of many people's experiences, including people who are dead at the time the particular individual in question is doing the logic. History here refers to people who are history, i.e. dead. Not just practice, but SOCIAL practice. Not just the result of one human's interaction and alteration of nature, but of many people's interaction and alteration of nature. from page 285: Psychological analysis of the act of reflexion of the external world in the individual head therefore cannot be the means of developing logic. The individual thinks only insofar as he has already mastered the general (logical) determinations historically moulded before him and completely independently of him. And psychology as a science does not investigate the development of human culture or civilisation, rightly considering it a premise independent of the individual. CB: does not or does ? For Marxism there is only social psychology, no individual psychology separate from social psych. from page 286-287: In labour (production) man makes one object of nature act on another object of the same nature in accordance with their own properties and laws of existence. Marx and Engels showed that the logical forms of man's action were the consequences (reflection) of real laws of human actions on objects, i.e. of practice in all its scope and development, laws that are independent of any thinking. Practice understood materialistically, appeared as a process in whose movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Commentary inserted below: - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 16:35 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Very interesting post. Just a few isolated comments to begin . . . At 03:10 PM 6/7/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: .. The fact that life forms activities are directed to concrete future states, they are, no matter how simple or mechanical, exercises in reason. This why, if you will permit a reference to an earlier thread, I regard the investigation into biosemiology to be a vitally important exploration of the roots of reason. The most primitive forms of self reproduction are a totally mechanical process yet they are at the very root of the rational process. We are not here proposing that nature has a rational aspect, a la Spinoza. As I wrote earlier I really have no idea what nature or Nature is. What I am proposing is that the roots of rationality are in the mechanical purposive activity of life forms and that whatever life forms know [including ourselves of course] is a function of our practical activities in nature FROM THE VERY ORIGINS OF THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE in whatever form it may be acquired, stored, recovered etc. But biosemiology itself seems to be rather obscurantist, more akin to Whitehead's philosophy of organism than to Marx. I'm more interested in Sharov's work (despite indications that his general methodological approach is Dubrovskian*) than in Hoffmeyer and the Western Biosemiologists. 2. Objectivity: In its essence objectivity refers to conscious reflection on something rather than the reflection of something in consciousness. That is to say that objectivity is the function of a activity and not something we passively assimilate as we confront the daily world. Some of the things or, better, activities we objectify (very few in my opinion) are those of our own subjective consciousness. Most are not. Most of our objectifying involves activities that are the preconditions for our own subjectivities, either the activities that emerge out of the collective subjective activities of men learned or developed in the course of collaborative activities while others involve activities that are preconditions for consciousness in all its aspects. Hegel, for example, divides his system of logic into two parts, objective logic and subjective logic or notional logic where the former is that logic which we enact without subjective reflection. Objective logic is objective because the only way we can deal with it intellectually in any other fashion than just doing it is as an object of reflection [I expect AB to come down on me like a ton of bricks on this one]. In its many concrete manifestations in human activity, intellectual and material, the principle of self-perpetuation, at least for men, is as subjective an issue as is the concept of self; the idea of property, of individual interests and even of family values are directly related to the activity of primitive self-perpetuation, though highly charged with many concrete connections to the complexities of human social existence. These slogans of superficial individualism of Social Darwinism and its inheritors, the bio-sociologists and others like them, only scratch the surface of things. Regarded objectively, the self-perpetuating activity of life forms is sublated in virtually all forms of human activity from eating and intercourse to social labour, wage slavery, and social revolution. Sounds like some version of Lenin's (or the Soviets' in general) theory of reflection. Life activity is a form of reflection. However, the 'roots of reason' strike me as no more than roots, not reason. No, not at all. As you must of read further on in this message I reject Lenin's passivist, reflection in consciousness, for the activist, conscious reflection on See point 2 in the original message: 2. Objectivity: In its essence objectivity refers to conscious reflection on something rather than the reflection of something in consciousness. That is to say that objectivity is the function of a activity and not something we passively assimilate as we confront the daily world. ... The natural sciences reflect exactly this relation between intellect and practice. There are no real ontological truths in science. Nothing is holy or beyond question and the only real proof is a sort of abstracted form of practice, experimentation. Whatever ontologising scientists do, and some do, is tolerated by the scientific community only insofar as it remains speculation and does not interfere with the scientific process. Great scientists have had ideas; Newton philosophized that the world was a clock wound up by the creator and then left to its own devices, Einstein was sure that God does not play dice, and Hawkins was until a few years ago
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
I'm writing up an alternative interpretation to Ilyenkov's writings on ideality as the integration of the concept of ideality into Marxist-Leninist Theory. When I finish that... Thanks for the offer. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 16:22 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Yes, I have this book somewhere. So are you going to forward your review to this list? At 03:31 PM 6/7/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Unfortunately, the mainstay of Western interpretations of Ilyenkov's works is the absolutely wierd product of a Brit academic who represents them as a sort of sociologically oriented form of Neo-positivism (itself a contradiction!). I wrote a first draft on his work that was totally unsatisfactory (too lacking in focus), and am now finishing up the outline of a revision which hopefully will be the basis of a more accurate presentation than was my first effort. I don't quite get this. But my first question is: who is this Brit neo-positivist academic? Dave Bakhurst of Queens College Ontario and author of Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. 1991 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Steve, Doesn't it make you wonder? A philosopher who regards the Diamat and all that utter rubbish as theory to be comparable to the works of Marx, Lenin, Deborin and Ilyenkov? It's Propaganda, certainly, theory, never! I'll never forget my old man's colourful reaction to Stalin's perceptive contribution to linguistics, and he didn't even finish High School! Do you think D Bakhurst classifies the classic philosophic work, Mein Kampf, Rosenburg's brilliant meanderings about race and destiny, and Mussolini's masterful contributions to human thought as serious theory? Oudeyis - 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: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 0:36 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! I continue to enjoy this thread, but will be gone for some days and it will probably be a little while after that before I can reengage. I will think about the position Charles and Ralph have taken on the relationship of the brain to the origins of humanity. I think Engels' argument about how labor created the human hand applies also to the brain, language organs, bipedalism, etc. so I will try to make a case for that. And I have been enjoying the exchanges between Ralph and Victor, especially on the issues of the role of practice in science, the nature of scientific thought, and the big question, just what is nature - and can humans really know what nature is in any fundamental ontological sense. I recently read the book by Bakhurst that Victor mentions, and have a different take on it. Briefly put, I disagree with Bakhurst's negative assessment of Leninist politics, his tendency to see Stalinism as a form of Bolshevism, and his general opinion of dialectics. But I agree with many of his insights into Ilyenkov and Vygotsky. Oops, got to get packing. See you all again soon. - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
process. Great scientists have had ideas; Newton philosophized that the world was a clock wound up by the creator and then left to its own devices, Einstein was sure that God does not play dice, and Hawkins was until a few years ago sure that unified field theory would answer all the questions of physics. Most of these and many more are, fortunately, either forgotten or on the way to being forgotten, though the scientific contributions of their makers remain important, even vital, components of the giant artefactual system men have built to enable their persistence in the world. Finally, the natural science of human activity and history, and this is what Historical Materialism, should be and sometimes is, can least afford the ontologising forays that occasionally crop up in fields such as physics, chemistry and organic sciences. The very abstractness of the subjects of these sciences renders the prononciamentos of important scientists fairly harmless in the long run. The natural science of human activity is as concrete as a science can be. It deals directly with human activity and with its consequences, and philosophic dogmatism of the left and of the right can only cause disaster, to real people and real communities (as we have witnessed in the past and as we do witness today). The only way to avoid these disasters, to the extent they can be avoided at all, is through adopting a critical and practical approach to theorizing and to subject every idea to serious debate and testing much as we are doing here. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:28 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! A question on one of your assertions: Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how primitive. How can dialectics be a property of all life no matter how primitive when you deny a dialectics of nature apart from praxis, which assumes cognitive activity? Is an amoeba a being-for-itself in addition to a being-in-itself? At 03:47 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Nicely put. Several tentative responses: The question remains, though, even within our sphere of action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is dialectics just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from intelligent life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense? Following Hegel's schema of the development of logic, I would argue that just as there is objective logic (i.e. logical activity that can only be known reflectively as an object of reflection) there is an objective dialectic. The basic kernel of both logic and dialectic (they are after all the same) is purposive activity. It matters not that the agents of purposive activity are fully or even at all conscious of their cognitive activity, the very prosecution of intentional activity implies logic/dialectics. Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how primitive. Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the natural world independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the dialectics of science? I think I gave a partial answer to this question in my response to Steve's last message. The products of human activity should never be regarded as the issue of pure logic or of the unfettered human imagination. Even Hegel would not accept this proposal. Science no less then the material products of human labour represent a unity of human activity in an independent external world that has existed prior to man's emergence and confronts men's ambitions with conditions to which he must accommodate his activity if they are to realize their goals. Labour is a cooperative activity in which men work with nature as their partner. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 12:29 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! I will need to address subsequent posts on this topic, but first: there is an interesting implicit subtlety here. If the question is not whether nature is dialectical but whether science (the study of nature) is dialectical, then even though nature exists independently of man, science as a form of human activity and cognition does not, since, tautologically, we only know what exists via interaction with the rest of nature and can't speak of anything else except as a hypothetical metaphysical possibility. The question remains
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
My full response is in the prior message. So here I'll just make a couple of short responses (see below). - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:24 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Your reasoning is fine up until the braking point I note below. At 03:10 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Steve, Well, now I know what comes after the snip. First paragraph: Oudeyis is saying nothing about what nature is, but rather is writing that whatever understandings man has of nature are a function primarily of his active interaction (his labour) with the natural conditions of his existence. The difference between knowing what nature is (i.e. its essential being or nature if you will) and having a working knowledge of world conditions is all the difference between the treatment of nature in Marxist and classical materialist theory. Now then, the only part of nature humanity can know is that part of it with which he has some sort of contact, and at least for Marxism, the only part of nature about which man can develop theories of practice is that which he can or has changed in some fashion. When it comes to explaining the practical foundation scientific cosmology we argue that the theories regarding the behaviour of huge masses of material over barely conceivable periods of time and spatial dimensions are projections based more often as not on experimentation with some of the very smallest of the universe's components; atoms, quarks, and so on). Anyway, its hard to imagine how men would know things about which they have absolutely no experience and how they would know how things work without a working experience with them or with things like them. Divine revelation perhaps? Finally, there is no doubt that nature must also include that which is beyond the observed and acted upon and that its existence is important for the creation of a materialist ideology. There are three ways the unknown makes itself felt in material human experience: 1.The fact that human practice and the science that represents it in thought is open ended or, better yet, appears to have no outward limits is a clear indication of the existence of more to nature than that which is treated by our current state of knowledge and practice. 2. The classic observations by Marx in the first chapter of German Ideology (1845) and the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1844) that the physical and sensual interface between man a nature in human labour is far more concrete than can ever be represented by even the most developed dialectics. The rational representation of men's activity in the world is then an inherently uncompletable task. 3. Hegel in his discussion of being makes the point that the logical formula A = A has no demonstrable correspondence with actual experience; diversity is an inherent property of identity (Andy B. presents a pretty thorough discussion on this in his The Meaning of Hegel, Chapter iv section, Diversity(essential Identity ) ). The whole basis of all rational activity, all dialectics, conscious and unconscious, deliberated and automatic, is the unity between the essential transitoriness of experienced moments and the determination of identities; qualities, quantities, measure and all the other things we have to know to develop a working model of the world. It's the unity of logical categorization and the essential temporality of immediate experience that fuels the dialectic and makes it so important a tool for exploration of the unknown. Second paragraph: The clarification of what exactly is the significance of the *objective* nature of nature is probably Ilyenkov's most important contributions to Scientific Marxism. Indeed for orthodox Marxists, including Lenin in his earlier writings (prior at very least to his readings in Hegel in 1914 and possibly as early as his article on Emprio-positivism), did indeed inherit the classical materialist concept of the objectivity of nature in the metaphysical sense of the essential being of nature; known, unknown, whatever. Ilyenkov in the last paragraphs of chapter 8 of Dialectical Logic summarizes the reasoning that is the basis of the concept of nature as prior to and independently of humankind. So far so good. Here he distinguishes between Marx and Engel's theories of human activity and Hegel's idealism by recapitulating their description of man as a product and force of nature that transforms nature into the instruments of his activity in appropriating nature's goods and producing from them the means for the perpetuation of his body organic and inorganic. Fine, except that with the diversification of human expertise, the self-reproduction of society's cognitive and practical interests means that some investigations by some individuals may not necessarily be directed towards the ends of instrumental
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
The problem here is simply that I'm not sure of the ground of our discussion. If this is tautological to you, then we share at very least the point of view that science is at root a product of men's response to their needs and not simply a reflection of the universe in consciousness. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:15 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Well, my reaction here re-invokes my sense of the tautology of all such arguments. That is, there can be no meaningful claims about the universe apart from our interaction with the universe since we can't make any claims about anything without interacting with the phenomena about which we are making claims. Your claim that all our knowledge claims about the universe from the Big Bang on, are expressions of human need, is tautologically true, and hence not very interesting or revealing. At 11:51 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 6:14 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't anything that can be qualified as man's interaction withthe world. does in your view dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not simply adjust itself to nature like other animals but starts changibng it more or less conscioulsy by labour? NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD Whether or not nature has a history is a question for nature, of little relevance for the practical realization of human needs. Man, in order to better determine his needs and the means necessary to realize them investigates through reason and practice (experimentation and informed search) the development of the relevant (essential) incohoate features of the natural world, including those of his own activities. The result is the objective determinations of past events in the natural world and of their relevance to the form and substance of our current needs and to the realization of these in practical activity. The laws and principles as well as the developmental schemas produced by our research into what is called Natural History are a product of and the means for realization of strictly human objectives. Is this a history of nature? Well, we are ourselves an integral part and force of the natural world and the massive array of objects we depend on for perpetuation of our life activity have their ultimate origin in nature, but that's a far cry from arguing that human beings and their essential equipage is identical with the totality of nature or that our activity in nature involves nature as a whole. Regards, Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
I've inteleaved my comments in the foliage of your commentary. - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 3:51 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Interleaved comments on further fragments of your post: At 03:08 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: .. I see your not going to let me deal with the dogmatics of classical materialism briefly. The kernel of my argument is that in general, discourse segregated from practice can only be theological, i.e. concerning articles of faith rather than descriptions of demonstrable practice. I say in general, since scientists usually discuss their findings with only minimal reference to the practicalities that are the origins and ultimate objects of their work. This is mostly a manifestation of the extreme division of labour that isolates professional researchers from all but the immediate subjects of their work. In any case, I've yet to see a monograph or article of a natural scientist that presents his work as having universal significance. There are exceptions to this rule such as Hawkins in physics and Dawkins in population genetics, and the result is invariably utter nonsense. I'm referring here to Hawkins conviction that unified field theory will provide an ultimate theory of the physical world and to Dawkin's projection of the mechanics of population genetics to the science of culture (memics and all that). Science as the theory of practice is implicitly restricted in relevance to the conditions of the moment (even when the problems it is designed to treat are projected into the near or far future). The discoveries of this kind of science are inevitably relevant only to the particular circumstances of their production, and to the specific subjects of their focus and have no claim as eternal truths. Einstein, Newton and Galileo will never acquire the sainthood of the revealers of final truths. On the contrary, their ideas will only remain significant so long as they are relevant to the practices and technologies that we men need to perpetuate ourselves, ourselves here meaning the entire complex of organic and inorganic components of our individual and collective life activities. Thus, science as the theory of practice is an inherently revolutionary activity. This is interesting as a vantage point, i.e. beginning from the scope of praxis and explaining why scientists can be blockheads when they venture beyond the specific praxis that enabled them to achieve what they did. But I find this approach more credible when it is re-routed back to objectivity. Come again? Discussion on the nature of being, on the substance of nature, and so on is from the point of view of historical materialism no less restricted to the conditions of its production than is practical science. However, the inherent object of such discussions is the determination of the absolute and final nature of things at all places and in all times. The ostensible object of the advocates of such metaphysical finalities is the expression of ultimate truths regarding the universe and its parts, the absolute contradiction to the objects of practice and the science of practice. Anyway, it is one thing to develop theories concerning particularities of that grand everything we call nature, it's quite another to present particular results as universals about the universe. The former can be demonstrated, proved if you will, the latter extends beyond all possibilities of human experience, hence it can only be a product either of divine revelation or of normative practice, i.e. ethos. I prefer ethos to divine revelation. I'm afraid I don't quite grasp this. You are suggesting, I think, that general ontological pronouncements not tied to some current concerns of praxis become fruitless or even retrograde metaphysics. I don't quite agree with this, but I do agree that these traditional philosophical concerns become more dynamic and fruitful when connected to specific problems of the present. The utility of general ontological pronouncements is not in question. Undoubtedly they are useful otherwise they would never be made. I'm arguing that ontological pronouncements are retrograde metaphysics and bad science. .. I think you're right. The question then is--how to put this?--the line of demarcation between nature in itself and . . . nature for us . . . and science. I've been cautious about making claims about the 'dialectics of nature' in se, i.e. apart from our methods of analysis (which I guess you might call 'contemplative'. This is the old problem, as traditional terminology puts it, of the relation between (or very existence of) subjective (dialectical logic as subject of debate) and objective dialectics (which, with respect to nature, is the focus of positive and negative engagements with dialectical
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Yes, I have this book somewhere. So are you going to forward your review to this list? At 03:31 PM 6/7/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: Unfortunately, the mainstay of Western interpretations of Ilyenkov's works is the absolutely wierd product of a Brit academic who represents them as a sort of sociologically oriented form of Neo-positivism (itself a contradiction!). I wrote a first draft on his work that was totally unsatisfactory (too lacking in focus), and am now finishing up the outline of a revision which hopefully will be the basis of a more accurate presentation than was my first effort. I don't quite get this. But my first question is: who is this Brit neo-positivist academic? Dave Bakhurst of Queens College Ontario and author of Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald Ilyenkov. 1991 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Very interesting post. Just a few isolated comments to begin . . . At 03:10 PM 6/7/2005 +0200, Victor wrote: .. The fact that life forms activities are directed to concrete future states, they are, no matter how simple or mechanical, exercises in reason. This why, if you will permit a reference to an earlier thread, I regard the investigation into biosemiology to be a vitally important exploration of the roots of reason. The most primitive forms of self reproduction are a totally mechanical process yet they are at the very root of the rational process. We are not here proposing that nature has a rational aspect, a la Spinoza. As I wrote earlier I really have no idea what nature or Nature is. What I am proposing is that the roots of rationality are in the mechanical purposive activity of life forms and that whatever life forms know [including ourselves of course] is a function of our practical activities in nature FROM THE VERY ORIGINS OF THE ACQUISITION OF KNOWLEDGE in whatever form it may be acquired, stored, recovered etc. But biosemiology itself seems to be rather obscurantist, more akin to Whitehead's philosophy of organism than to Marx. 2. Objectivity: In its essence objectivity refers to conscious reflection on something rather than the reflection of something in consciousness. That is to say that objectivity is the function of a activity and not something we passively assimilate as we confront the daily world. Some of the things or, better, activities we objectify (very few in my opinion) are those of our own subjective consciousness. Most are not. Most of our objectifying involves activities that are the preconditions for our own subjectivities, either the activities that emerge out of the collective subjective activities of men learned or developed in the course of collaborative activities while others involve activities that are preconditions for consciousness in all its aspects. Hegel, for example, divides his system of logic into two parts, objective logic and subjective logic or notional logic where the former is that logic which we enact without subjective reflection. Objective logic is objective because the only way we can deal with it intellectually in any other fashion than just doing it is as an object of reflection [I expect AB to come down on me like a ton of bricks on this one]. In its many concrete manifestations in human activity, intellectual and material, the principle of self-perpetuation, at least for men, is as subjective an issue as is the concept of self; the idea of property, of individual interests and even of family values are directly related to the activity of primitive self-perpetuation, though highly charged with many concrete connections to the complexities of human social existence. These slogans of superficial individualism of Social Darwinism and its inheritors, the bio-sociologists and others like them, only scratch the surface of things. Regarded objectively, the self-perpetuating activity of life forms is sublated in virtually all forms of human activity from eating and intercourse to social labour, wage slavery, and social revolution. Sounds like some version of Lenin's (or the Soviets' in general) theory of reflection. Life activity is a form of reflection. However, the 'roots of reason' strike me as no more than roots, not reason. ... The natural sciences reflect exactly this relation between intellect and practice. There are no real ontological truths in science. Nothing is holy or beyond question and the only real proof is a sort of abstracted form of practice, experimentation. Whatever ontologising scientists do, and some do, is tolerated by the scientific community only insofar as it remains speculation and does not interfere with the scientific process. Great scientists have had ideas; Newton philosophized that the world was a clock wound up by the creator and then left to its own devices, Einstein was sure that God does not play dice, and Hawkins was until a few years ago sure that unified field theory would answer all the questions of physics. Most of these and many more are, fortunately, either forgotten or on the way to being forgotten, though the scientific contributions of their makers remain important, even vital, components of the giant artefactual system men have built to enable their persistence in the world. The Royal Society started this practice, to keep metaphysics and theology out of empirical science. Finally, the natural science of human activity and history, and this is what Historical Materialism, should be and sometimes is, can least afford the ontologising forays that occasionally crop up in fields such as physics, chemistry and organic sciences. The very abstractness of the subjects of these sciences renders the prononciamentos of important scientists fairly harmless in the long run. The natural science of human activity
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
I continue to enjoy this thread, but will be gone for some days and it will probably be a little while after that before I can reengage. I will think about the position Charles and Ralph have taken on the relationship of the brain to the origins of humanity. I think Engels' argument about how labor created the human hand applies also to the brain, language organs, bipedalism, etc. so I will try to make a case for that. And I have been enjoying the exchanges between Ralph and Victor, especially on the issues of the role of practice in science, the nature of scientific thought, and the big question, just what is nature - and can humans really know what nature is in any fundamental ontological sense. I recently read the book by Bakhurst that Victor mentions, and have a different take on it. Briefly put, I disagree with Bakhurst's negative assessment of Leninist politics, his tendency to see Stalinism as a form of Bolshevism, and his general opinion of dialectics. But I agree with many of his insights into Ilyenkov and Vygotsky. Oops, got to get packing. See you all again soon. - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O! Dialectics
Don't forget the extensive discussion of materialism in THE HOLY FAMILY. Of course, what distinguishes home sapiens from the other monkeys is not labor as an abstraction, but the brain difference, which means the genetic capacity for language and hence cultural transmission of information, plus the other distinguishing features such as upright gait, opposable thumbs. Your point about imagination signals Marx's recognition of the cognitive difference. At 10:12 AM 6/6/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: RE Lil Joe joe_radical Lil Joe: Here, Charles, I think we have a major disagreement as far as Marxian materialism is concerned. Marx never wrote of 'materialism' and 'idealism' as a discussion outside the context of the materialist conception of history. ^ CB: He discusses materialism in The Theses on Feuerbach. Engels discusses materialism beyond the materialist conception of history. See especially _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ for this discussion. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
to CB Right, I hear the same language. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 16:25 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Victor victor Of course objectivity reality exists, but we have to realize that what Marx, Lenin and other intelligent Marxists like Ilyenkov meant by objective reality is not reality contemplated by some totally uninvolved philosophical being. Just the reverse is true objective reality is only known through what Lenin calls revolutionary practice, the transformation of one object into another through labour. It is only when we know how and under what conditions (including of course our own activities) an object becomes something else that we cognize its real character. This is as true of the child knocking about a gewgaw hanging over his crib as it is for the physicist smashing atoms. There is virtually no aspect of human knowledge (not human activity) that is truly a priori. Oudeyis ^^ CB: Yes,in saying that objective reality exists, I did indicate any break with The Theses on Feuerbach ,esp. 1, 2 and 11 here. Marx distinguishes his materialism from all those hitherto existing by by making the subject active not contemplative, like Feuerbach. Practice is the test of theory, otherwise it's scholastic. Philosophers have interpreted the world, the thing is to change it. Lenin's _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ is thoroughly infused with Engels' elaboration of these principles in _Anti-Duhring_. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Note my interleaved comments on a fragment of a key post of yours At 03:08 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: .. I don't see this. I see the problem this way: that stage of the development of materialism is inadequate to grasp the nature of human activity, both practical and cognitive. Labels such as 'nature as such' or 'contemplative' don't work for me without such clarification, though it does seem that your characterization here is consistent with me though apparently not synonymous. The old materialism, as well as the course of development of modern natural science, is such that it begins with the study of the lowest levels of the organization of matter and works its way up. But once it works its way up to the human species itself as an object of study, its intellectual limitations become manifest. And I think this is where Marx intervenes. If I understand you correctly, you argue that so long as the natural sciences dealt with phenomena that was simple enough to contemplate without our needing to be aware o the activity of the contemplating subject, the old materialism served as a sufficient paradigm for explanations of the observed. It is only when we deal with men, i.e. ourselves that we must take into account our own subjectivity to understand what's going on. I prefer to stand your argument on its head. As long as human needs could (and given the available technology, only could) be satisfied by manipulation of his world on a purely mechanical level, the contemplative and mechanical paradigms of classical materialism was a viable system for explaining the effectiveness of human practice. In turn, I could stand your argument on its head. What is the vantage point: objective reality with the relation of human practice as a reflection of it, or the justification of practice by its ability to fulfill needs? Either vantage point could be considered a question of perspective from one angle or the other. They could be equivalent. Yet I see my argument as basic as yours as derivative, though that perspective is also valid, i.e. explaining the effectiveness of human practice under defined conditions. With the development of new technologies and new needs, (like the development of machinery and instruments powered by electricity). One of the earliest examples of this development in Physics was the birth (emergence?) Heisenberg principle in Quantum physics. Newtonian physics dealt with big things that could be measured with instruments that had no apparent effect whatsoever on the measure itself, thus the measurement itself could be factored out of the explanation of the activities of the things measured. Small particle, high energy physics deals with things so small and so sensitive to the effects even of light that physicists must at very least take into account the effect of their measuring activities on the subjects of their research. As I suggest below the big revolution in modern natural science, the revolution that is giving birth to concepts such as autopoiesis, emergence and non-linear causality (attractors and Feigenbaum trees) is mostly, (if not mistaken the attractor was first formally described by Lorenz in 1963 a weatherman and the term strange attractor was first used in 1971 by Ruelle and Takens to describe fluid dynamics) connected to the investigation of systems that are ever more sensitive to our handling of their components; such as weather, the behaviour of ecosystems, animal ethology and so on. This is of course a function of the kinds of needs that our once largely mechanical handling of the conditions of our existence has produced. Thus, for example, the development of air transport has created an urgent demand for extremely accurate weather prediction, much more accurate than the simple Newtonian based physics of atmospherics and energetics (the meteorology we learned in Highschool) can provide. The modern aircraft which is still, perhaps only barely, a mechanical instrument has compelled the development of meteorology into a science in which mechanism is entirely sublated into a system that cannot be regarded as mechanical by any definition. But note it's not just our needs, but the objectivity of the realities under investigation, for whatever reason we needed to engage them, that force methodological and philosophical revisions. One could easily argue for a dialectics of nature on this basis and not just a dialectic of science. Your perspective is interesting because it begins from the vantage point of practice. But do you really prove anything different from my perspective? It is not enough to explain the increasing dominance of processual and teleological explanations in natural science as a function of the subjects of scientific investigation. This is obvious. The real issue is the effect of the development of human needs (mostly as a consequence of the transformations men have made on the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Interleaved comments on further fragments of your post: At 03:08 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: .. I see your not going to let me deal with the dogmatics of classical materialism briefly. The kernel of my argument is that in general, discourse segregated from practice can only be theological, i.e. concerning articles of faith rather than descriptions of demonstrable practice. I say in general, since scientists usually discuss their findings with only minimal reference to the practicalities that are the origins and ultimate objects of their work. This is mostly a manifestation of the extreme division of labour that isolates professional researchers from all but the immediate subjects of their work. In any case, I've yet to see a monograph or article of a natural scientist that presents his work as having universal significance. There are exceptions to this rule such as Hawkins in physics and Dawkins in population genetics, and the result is invariably utter nonsense. I'm referring here to Hawkins conviction that unified field theory will provide an ultimate theory of the physical world and to Dawkin's projection of the mechanics of population genetics to the science of culture (memics and all that). Science as the theory of practice is implicitly restricted in relevance to the conditions of the moment (even when the problems it is designed to treat are projected into the near or far future). The discoveries of this kind of science are inevitably relevant only to the particular circumstances of their production, and to the specific subjects of their focus and have no claim as eternal truths. Einstein, Newton and Galileo will never acquire the sainthood of the revealers of final truths. On the contrary, their ideas will only remain significant so long as they are relevant to the practices and technologies that we men need to perpetuate ourselves, ourselves here meaning the entire complex of organic and inorganic components of our individual and collective life activities. Thus, science as the theory of practice is an inherently revolutionary activity. This is interesting as a vantage point, i.e. beginning from the scope of praxis and explaining why scientists can be blockheads when they venture beyond the specific praxis that enabled them to achieve what they did. But I find this approach more credible when it is re-routed back to objectivity. Discussion on the nature of being, on the substance of nature, and so on is from the point of view of historical materialism no less restricted to the conditions of its production than is practical science. However, the inherent object of such discussions is the determination of the absolute and final nature of things at all places and in all times. The ostensible object of the advocates of such metaphysical finalities is the expression of ultimate truths regarding the universe and its parts, the absolute contradiction to the objects of practice and the science of practice. Anyway, it is one thing to develop theories concerning particularities of that grand everything we call nature, it's quite another to present particular results as universals about the universe. The former can be demonstrated, proved if you will, the latter extends beyond all possibilities of human experience, hence it can only be a product either of divine revelation or of normative practice, i.e. ethos. I prefer ethos to divine revelation. I'm afraid I don't quite grasp this. You are suggesting, I think, that general ontological pronouncements not tied to some current concerns of praxis become fruitless or even retrograde metaphysics. I don't quite agree with this, but I do agree that these traditional philosophical concerns become more dynamic and fruitful when connected to specific problems of the present. .. I think you're right. The question then is--how to put this?--the line of demarcation between nature in itself and . . . nature for us . . . and science. I've been cautious about making claims about the 'dialectics of nature' in se, i.e. apart from our methods of analysis (which I guess you might call 'contemplative'. This is the old problem, as traditional terminology puts it, of the relation between (or very existence of) subjective (dialectical logic as subject of debate) and objective dialectics (which, with respect to nature, is the focus of positive and negative engagements with dialectical thought). It's not clear to me whether you would go along with my various analyses of this problematic over the past dozen years, or even accept such a conceptual distinction. But I think that the mess we've inherited shows up its historical importance. While I agree we need an overarching conception that somehow interrelates nature, society, and thought, the direct identification of all of these components with the same dialectical laws is, I think, a logically blurred mistake. I believe this implicit problem comes up
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Well, my reaction here re-invokes my sense of the tautology of all such arguments. That is, there can be no meaningful claims about the universe apart from our interaction with the universe since we can't make any claims about anything without interacting with the phenomena about which we are making claims. Your claim that all our knowledge claims about the universe from the Big Bang on, are expressions of human need, is tautologically true, and hence not very interesting or revealing. At 11:51 AM 5/28/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: - Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 6:14 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't anything that can be qualified as man's interaction withthe world. does in your view dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not simply adjust itself to nature like other animals but starts changibng it more or less conscioulsy by labour? NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD Whether or not nature has a history is a question for nature, of little relevance for the practical realization of human needs. Man, in order to better determine his needs and the means necessary to realize them investigates through reason and practice (experimentation and informed search) the development of the relevant (essential) incohoate features of the natural world, including those of his own activities. The result is the objective determinations of past events in the natural world and of their relevance to the form and substance of our current needs and to the realization of these in practical activity. The laws and principles as well as the developmental schemas produced by our research into what is called Natural History are a product of and the means for realization of strictly human objectives. Is this a history of nature? Well, we are ourselves an integral part and force of the natural world and the massive array of objects we depend on for perpetuation of our life activity have their ultimate origin in nature, but that's a far cry from arguing that human beings and their essential equipage is identical with the totality of nature or that our activity in nature involves nature as a whole. Regards, Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Your reasoning is fine up until the braking point I note below. At 03:10 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Steve, Well, now I know what comes after the snip. First paragraph: Oudeyis is saying nothing about what nature is, but rather is writing that whatever understandings man has of nature are a function primarily of his active interaction (his labour) with the natural conditions of his existence. The difference between knowing what nature is (i.e. its essential being or nature if you will) and having a working knowledge of world conditions is all the difference between the treatment of nature in Marxist and classical materialist theory. Now then, the only part of nature humanity can know is that part of it with which he has some sort of contact, and at least for Marxism, the only part of nature about which man can develop theories of practice is that which he can or has changed in some fashion. When it comes to explaining the practical foundation scientific cosmology we argue that the theories regarding the behaviour of huge masses of material over barely conceivable periods of time and spatial dimensions are projections based more often as not on experimentation with some of the very smallest of the universe's components; atoms, quarks, and so on). Anyway, its hard to imagine how men would know things about which they have absolutely no experience and how they would know how things work without a working experience with them or with things like them. Divine revelation perhaps? Finally, there is no doubt that nature must also include that which is beyond the observed and acted upon and that its existence is important for the creation of a materialist ideology. There are three ways the unknown makes itself felt in material human experience: 1.The fact that human practice and the science that represents it in thought is open ended or, better yet, appears to have no outward limits is a clear indication of the existence of more to nature than that which is treated by our current state of knowledge and practice. 2. The classic observations by Marx in the first chapter of German Ideology (1845) and the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1844) that the physical and sensual interface between man a nature in human labour is far more concrete than can ever be represented by even the most developed dialectics. The rational representation of men's activity in the world is then an inherently uncompletable task. 3. Hegel in his discussion of being makes the point that the logical formula A = A has no demonstrable correspondence with actual experience; diversity is an inherent property of identity (Andy B. presents a pretty thorough discussion on this in his The Meaning of Hegel, Chapter iv section, Diversity(essential Identity ) ). The whole basis of all rational activity, all dialectics, conscious and unconscious, deliberated and automatic, is the unity between the essential transitoriness of experienced moments and the determination of identities; qualities, quantities, measure and all the other things we have to know to develop a working model of the world. It's the unity of logical categorization and the essential temporality of immediate experience that fuels the dialectic and makes it so important a tool for exploration of the unknown. Second paragraph: The clarification of what exactly is the significance of the *objective* nature of nature is probably Ilyenkov's most important contributions to Scientific Marxism. Indeed for orthodox Marxists, including Lenin in his earlier writings (prior at very least to his readings in Hegel in 1914 and possibly as early as his article on Emprio-positivism), did indeed inherit the classical materialist concept of the objectivity of nature in the metaphysical sense of the essential being of nature; known, unknown, whatever. Ilyenkov in the last paragraphs of chapter 8 of Dialectical Logic summarizes the reasoning that is the basis of the concept of nature as prior to and independently of humankind. So far so good. Here he distinguishes between Marx and Engel's theories of human activity and Hegel's idealism by recapitulating their description of man as a product and force of nature that transforms nature into the instruments of his activity in appropriating nature's goods and producing from them the means for the perpetuation of his body organic and inorganic. Fine, except that with the diversification of human expertise, the self-reproduction of society's cognitive and practical interests means that some investigations by some individuals may not necessarily be directed towards the ends of instrumental self-preservation, though of course indirectly every human activity--play being the most universal example--develops skills that are always instrumentally useful in the end. Nothing could more clearly describe the independence of abstract nature from the emergence of human activity in the world. After all, if man has his origins in the
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
A question on one of your assertions: Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how primitive. How can dialectics be a property of all life no matter how primitive when you deny a dialectics of nature apart from praxis, which assumes cognitive activity? Is an amoeba a being-for-itself in addition to a being-in-itself? At 03:47 PM 5/29/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Nicely put. Several tentative responses: The question remains, though, even within our sphere of action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is dialectics just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from intelligent life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense? Following Hegel's schema of the development of logic, I would argue that just as there is objective logic (i.e. logical activity that can only be known reflectively as an object of reflection) there is an objective dialectic. The basic kernel of both logic and dialectic (they are after all the same) is purposive activity. It matters not that the agents of purposive activity are fully or even at all conscious of their cognitive activity, the very prosecution of intentional activity implies logic/dialectics. Note that this is not the same as saying that nature is dialectical, but rather is an assertion that dialectics is a universal property of all life activity no matter how primitive. Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the natural world independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the dialectics of science? I think I gave a partial answer to this question in my response to Steve's last message. The products of human activity should never be regarded as the issue of pure logic or of the unfettered human imagination. Even Hegel would not accept this proposal. Science no less then the material products of human labour represent a unity of human activity in an independent external world that has existed prior to man's emergence and confronts men's ambitions with conditions to which he must accommodate his activity if they are to realize their goals. Labour is a cooperative activity in which men work with nature as their partner. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 12:29 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! I will need to address subsequent posts on this topic, but first: there is an interesting implicit subtlety here. If the question is not whether nature is dialectical but whether science (the study of nature) is dialectical, then even though nature exists independently of man, science as a form of human activity and cognition does not, since, tautologically, we only know what exists via interaction with the rest of nature and can't speak of anything else except as a hypothetical metaphysical possibility. The question remains, though, even within our sphere of action, discovering nature's properties independent of us, is dialectics just a matter of cognition, or the structure of social activity more generally, or does it begin in the natural processes apart from intelligent life activity that, after all, have ultimately generated conscious beings? Is there an objective dialectics in this latter sense? Again, here's the ambiguity. Science, let us say, correctly characterizes the natural world independently of us. But is dialectics pertaining to this independent external world the dialectics of nature itself or the dialectics of science? More to come. At 12:14 PM 5/27/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't anything that can be qualified as man's interaction withthe world. does in your view dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not simply adjust itself to nature like other animals but starts changibng it more or less conscioulsy by labour? NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Sorry, Had a major technical breakdown. About the only thing of Marx's early writings that relates to science is his 1844 Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (At the end of the article he devotes about a page and a half to discussion the movement from Logic to Nature in Hegel's Encyclopaedia of Logic. It isn't much but small as it is it's sharp). Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 11:25 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Well, if you got my point (2), the rest shouldn't be so mysterious. ME openly admit they're not going to tackle directly either the natural sciences as an intellectual enterprise or their objects of study (laws of nature). At the same time they admit that's part of the picture, though they are specifically beginning their studies from the standpoint of historical materialism. That's a pretty damn important point, esp. for those who would make claims about Marx's attitude to science. As I recall, at that stage, Marx only really considers science as something that plays a role in industry--man's advanced interchange with nature. Science as an intellectual activity in itself, as theorizing, method, or research, is not part of the picture at this time. Hence, ME do not turn their attention to the philosophy of the natural sciences. I'll add to that: when Marx makes remarks criticizing prior materialism, this belongs to the history of philosophy, not actual modern science. Discussing Epicurus and Democritus or the French materialists is not engaging with science. I'll add also, that a philosophy of nature is not a philosophy of science, if a perspective on scientific methodology as a means of understanding nature is not included in it. BTW, Marx's early writings (vol. 1) includes some outline of Hegel's philosophy of nature. But I don't really know how Marx may have used Hegel's PN. Does anyone know something I don't? At 12:06 AM 5/30/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: Steve responds to a post from Ralph: Ralph: on 5/29/2005 at 12:48 PM Ralph explained, referring to the passage from ME copied below: ... Note that ME state that natural preconditions antedate historical analysis, but they are not going to delve into them at this point. Two conclusions follow: (1) Nature is not merely a social category for Marx as some claim; (2) Marx doesn't take the trouble at this point to investigate natural science and especially not its objective correlate as an activity in itself, since the question at hand is the organization of man's practical interaction with nature in conjunction with social organization. But doesnt practical interaction include natural scientific research, methodology, and theory? It must, of course, ... Steve: I am with Ralph so far, but I am puzzled by where Ralph goes next: Ralph: ... but note that Marx is onto the direct, practical transformation of nature as it applies to material production and not that aspect of it that deals with specialized scientific activity. Note the plural references to physical preconditions--nature in general and human physiology in particular--that are acknowledged as preconditions and then set aside. Do you see the distinction here? Steve: To be honest, I don't get what point Ralph is trying to make yet, so I guess I have to answer: no - I don't yet see the distinction being made here - sorry! Ralph, if you would be so kind as to explain this distinction ... - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Did some further checking in MIA and you're quite correct, even when Marx discusses ancient astrology it, he treats it as a practical solution to a human problem, i.e. as a cosmic calendar, compass and clock. From the point of view of Historical materialism the importance of science, even theoretical science is its role in the realization of practical human needs. The only other imaginable value of natural science for historical materialism is the development of more concrete understandings of those physical, chemical and organic processes that can be shown to have important consequences for the development of human activity and particularly of human social activity. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 11:25 Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Well, if you got my point (2), the rest shouldn't be so mysterious. ME openly admit they're not going to tackle directly either the natural sciences as an intellectual enterprise or their objects of study (laws of nature). At the same time they admit that's part of the picture, though they are specifically beginning their studies from the standpoint of historical materialism. That's a pretty damn important point, esp. for those who would make claims about Marx's attitude to science. As I recall, at that stage, Marx only really considers science as something that plays a role in industry--man's advanced interchange with nature. Science as an intellectual activity in itself, as theorizing, method, or research, is not part of the picture at this time. Hence, ME do not turn their attention to the philosophy of the natural sciences. I'll add to that: when Marx makes remarks criticizing prior materialism, this belongs to the history of philosophy, not actual modern science. Discussing Epicurus and Democritus or the French materialists is not engaging with science. I'll add also, that a philosophy of nature is not a philosophy of science, if a perspective on scientific methodology as a means of understanding nature is not included in it. BTW, Marx's early writings (vol. 1) includes some outline of Hegel's philosophy of nature. But I don't really know how Marx may have used Hegel's PN. Does anyone know something I don't? At 12:06 AM 5/30/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: Steve responds to a post from Ralph: Ralph: on 5/29/2005 at 12:48 PM Ralph explained, referring to the passage from ME copied below: ... Note that ME state that natural preconditions antedate historical analysis, but they are not going to delve into them at this point. Two conclusions follow: (1) Nature is not merely a social category for Marx as some claim; (2) Marx doesn't take the trouble at this point to investigate natural science and especially not its objective correlate as an activity in itself, since the question at hand is the organization of man's practical interaction with nature in conjunction with social organization. But doesnt practical interaction include natural scientific research, methodology, and theory? It must, of course, ... Steve: I am with Ralph so far, but I am puzzled by where Ralph goes next: Ralph: ... but note that Marx is onto the direct, practical transformation of nature as it applies to material production and not that aspect of it that deals with specialized scientific activity. Note the plural references to physical preconditions--nature in general and human physiology in particular--that are acknowledged as preconditions and then set aside. Do you see the distinction here? Steve: To be honest, I don't get what point Ralph is trying to make yet, so I guess I have to answer: no - I don't yet see the distinction being made here - sorry! Ralph, if you would be so kind as to explain this distinction ... - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
True, hunters and gatherers do not raise their own food, but they do produce instruments that enhance if not enable the effectivity of their subsistence activity. Developed hunting and gathering practice appears often to be accompanied by collecting strategies that encourage the preservation of their food sources, such as never killing nursing young or pregnant game and taking care to leave some of the preferred plants in the ground to guarantee next year's crop. Most proto or near humans exhibit some instrument enabled activity, some of it quite complex. Try ant fishing with a bit of grass (a narrow fresh green leaf is best) as do the Chimpanzees. Clearly, the earliest forms of tool assisted activity precede humanities emergence, men's special relations to tool making and use being more a matter of its high significance for his life activity rather than in its simple presence in a creature's repertoire of activities. By the way, the key word in hunting and gathering is gathering. To gather means to collect a quantity of whatever is to be gathered and to take it home to enjoy later at the family meal. Very little can be carried home in two closed fists. One may need not make a basket to collect greens, but they should be arranged in a bundle so that a few leaves can hold much more than a pair of hands. Stems twisted to make string or even simple knots may well have been the first tools, but tools they are. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 22:11 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Steve Gabosch quotes: Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. ^ CB: Actually this isn't quite true. The first human modes of production are termed hunting and gathering because humans do not produce their own subsistence, but rather gather what nature has produced without human intervention. , so to speak. That doesn't happen until tens of thousands of years after the origin of the human species with horticulture, farming and domestication of animals. I'm not sure what implication this has for our dialectics and nature discussion What distinguishes humans from other animials is culture, language and methods of passing on experiences from one generation to the next. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Of course objectivity reality exists, but we have to realize that what Marx, Lenin and other intelligent Marxists like Ilyenkov meant by objective reality is not reality contemplated by some totally uninvolved philosophical being. Just the reverse is true objective reality is only known through what Lenin calls revolutionary practice, the transformation of one object into another through labour. It is only when we know how and under what conditions (including of course our own activities) an object becomes something else that we cognize its real character. This is as true of the child knocking about a gewgaw hanging over his crib as it is for the physicist smashing atoms. There is virtually no aspect of human knowledge (not human activity) that is truly a priori. Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 22:48 Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! How about objective reality exists ( Lenin's definition of materialism in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_) and we only know objective reality through practice , or our interaction with it beyond contemplation ( First and Second Theses on Feuerbach). Lenin formulated the idea of objective reality in contrast with Berkeleyian idealism and solopsism. In other words, we can't shape or make the world through our thoughts. So far in human history, our interaction with it causes us to make the generalization that objective reality is dialectical. I call this generalization an _a posteriori_ ( to distinguish it from _a priori_, or without experience)presumption ( as in law, a presumption that can be rebutted by future experience, but for now we hold as true like an axiom in math). Charles Oudeyis: Steve, Well, now I know what comes after the snip. First paragraph: Oudeyis is saying nothing about what nature is, but rather is writing that whatever understandings man has of nature are a function primarily of his active interaction (his labour) with the natural conditions of his existence. The difference between knowing what nature is (i.e. its essential being or nature if you will) and having a working knowledge of world conditions is all the difference between the treatment of nature in Marxist and classical materialist theory. Now then, the only part of nature humanity can know is that part of it with which he has some sort of contact, and at least for Marxism, the only part of nature about which man can develop theories of practice is that which he can or has changed in some fashion. When it comes to explaining the practical foundation scientific cosmology we argue that the theories regarding the behaviour of huge masses of material over barely conceivable periods of time and spatial dimensions are projections based more often as not on experimentation with some of the very smallest of the universe's components; atoms, quarks, and so on). Anyway, its hard to imagine how men would know things about which they have absolutely no experience and how they would know how things work without a working experience with them or with things like them. Divine revelation perhaps? Finally, there is no doubt that nature must also include that which is beyond the observed and acted upon and that its existence is important for the creation of a materialist ideology. There are three ways the unknown makes itself felt in material human experience: 1.The fact that human practice and the science that represents it in thought is open ended or, better yet, appears to have no outward limits is a clear indication of the existence of more to nature than that which is treated by our current state of knowledge and practice. 2. The classic observations by Marx in the first chapter of German Ideology (1845) and the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1844) that the physical and sensual interface between man a nature in human labour is far more concrete than can ever be represented by even the most developed dialectics. The rational representation of men's activity in the world is then an inherently uncompletable task. 3. Hegel in his discussion of being makes the point that the logical formula A = A has no demonstrable correspondence with actual experience; diversity is an inherent property of identity (Andy B. presents a pretty thorough discussion on this in his The Meaning of Hegel, Chapter iv section, Diversity(essential Identity ) ). The whole basis of all rational activity, all dialectics, conscious and unconscious, deliberated and automatic, is the unity between the essential transitoriness of experienced moments and the determination of identities; qualities, quantities, measure and all the other things we have to know to develop a working model of the world. It's the unity of logical categorization and the essential
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Charles, your logic below unsuccessfully explains the relationship between human biology and human society. You merely repeat something no one disputes. All animals reproduce, just as they all breathe, and would die without doing so. But only humans produce - and probably would not even survive as animals anymore if they did not do so. The key question in my opinion is to address just what humans do that is new and different from other species. What makes humans human? Clearly, the answer begins with production and related activities. What is it about production and related activities, such as intergenerational transmission of culture, language, etc., that allows human collectives to continually transform both nature and themselves (including their methods of reproduction, family systems etc.)? A dialectical analysis of this continual process requires, in my opinion, a grasp of the fundamental logic of how human social labor and production creates an entirely new domain of life-existence unknown in non-human species. To see how little your paragraphs below contribute to this kind of understanding - I am not saying this about you, just the passages you offer below - substitute the term respiration for reproduction below - or for that matter, substitute any essential biological function. Humans would die from the lack of any of them (digestion, excretion, etc. etc.). You make this point yourself explicitly. But this point that humans absolutely require a successful biological existence to become the historical creatures we have become is certainly true, but unenlightening - even, if you will allow me to put this sharply, trivial, if that is as far as one goes. Who would dispute you? The challenge is to explain how we grew from being once upon a time *just* mammals to the sociological humans we are today - and the communists we aspire to be in the future. This line of inquiry is what Marx and Engels invented, and which I encourage all to continue developing. Again to put it bluntly, simply placing an equal sign between biology and sociology does not seem to contribute anything of much value that I can see. On the other hand, showing how the biological becomes sociological is very helpful. How did humanoid primates became historical beings? For example, a study into the role cultural transmission plays in production and socio-historical development, the investigation you suggested yesterday - based, I would urge, on the classical Marxist insights into the role of production in history as the motor force of the creation of humanity - could well qualify as such a helpful piece. That is my motivation for encouraging you to pursue your insights and studies on this - I believe this kind of study enhances Marxism and human science. On the rich question of reproduction that you raise below, much study is needed there, too - on how modes of reproduction have originated and developed in history, and how forms of reproduction, family systems, etc. have been major motor forces in the development (forward, backward, sideways and other ways) of human society and human psychology. Perhaps this is another formal piece of writing you could work on. Good luck! - Steve At 11:32 AM 6/2/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Actually , this essay ( rough copy here) is not on the issue that Steve suggested I develop. But it does deal with the anthropological passages at the beginning of _The German Ideology_ that are close to the one Steve first adduced for discussion. As I read this essay, I am claiming that M and E are not materialist enough in the GI. I don't have the part here, but in _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ Engels has much more advanced anthro knowledge than in _The G I_ , and in the Preface , he says production AND the family are cofundamental in determining _history_. I sent this to Thaxis several years ago http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/1998-April/008694.html Charles For Women's Liberation : Whoever heard of a one genearation species ? Every Marxist knows the A,B,C's of historical materialism or the materialist conception of history. The history of all hitherto existing society, since the breaking up of the ancient communes, is a history of class struggles between oppressor and oppressed. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels asserted an elementary anthropological or human nature rationale for this conception. In a section titled (in one translation) History: Fundamental Conditions , they say: ...life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life.
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Thanks for your response, it was a very good one. Charles, I think you have the makings of a coherent Marxist essay on these questions you raise. It seems you already have the ingredients at hand for such a study. For my part, I see the point you stress about the centrality of the intergenerational transmission of culture not as counterposed, but as complementary to the theorizing Marx and Engels did about human production and the social origins of humanity. I think they would heartily agree with you that the key is SOCIAL labor - (is there evidence to the contrary?) - and would welcome your bringing to bear some of the relevant wealth of new scientific knowledge from the social and life sciences that has emerged since their time - knowledge that has greatly increased our understanding of what humans have really done with nature, with one another, and just what it means to be and act human. Well-written and researched Marxist articles on these kinds of questions are always needed. Why not give it a go? Its a very important topic, and I think you are asking some really good questions. - Steve end At 02:04 PM 6/1/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Steve Gabosch Charles, in that quote from German Ideology below, ME refer to producing their *means* of subsistence, as in means of production, not the subsistence itself, as in gathered berries or hunted game, which as you point out humans did not domesticate until quite recently. CB: Could be as you interpret it. But means of subsistence could correspond to their later means of consumption as opposed to their later means of production. ^ Wouldn't social labor - including tools, like baskets and spears, as well as language to plan expeditions, and culture to pass on knowledge to future generations - count as means of subsistence? We of course know far more today about what pre-historic human life was like than anyone in the 19th Century did - or at least we have much more archeological data - but I think ME were on the right track on this one. I don't think they would disagree with your point about culture and language, which I think enhances their essential point about human social labor - the ability to produce - being the core difference between humans and animals. - Steve ^ CB: Yes, means of production could include language and planning as part of means of subsistence, but later on in this part of the German Ideology they make a big point about only then does consciousness arise or some such. Also, note they contrast producing means of subsistence with consciousness and religion. Well, in fact socalled ancestor worship would be a prime example of a method cultural transmission. But furthermore, even if we take producing means of subsistence to mean producing means of production or the famous tool-producing, I have concluded after many years of contemplating this that tool-producing is not the key distinction of humans. It is the passing on of how to make tools from one generation to the next that is uniquely human. Chimps in the wild today make tools. They just don't have tool making ,intergenerational traditions. I'm willing to discuss this more. This issue is a sort of speciality for me. It is a critique of Engels The role of labor in the whatever of man essay. The key is SOCIAL labor, not social LABOR. And even more social must most importantly include intergenerational sociality. I can elabortate if you like. To give another one of my favorite examples,each generation's not having to reinvent the wheel is the key, not inventing it in the first place. It is the cultural mechanism that allows ACCUMULATION of inventions that is critical, not the initial act of inventing some tool or form of labor. An individual primate might invent some tool, but they have no way to pass it on to future generations. Imitation is insufficient for that; culture is needed. Things like rituals and myths are needed. I know this is sort of heresy in that it seems to be idealism. I think not. Critique of idealism is only pertinent once we get to class divided society, antagonism between mental and physical labor, idealist philosophers and the like. I _am_ saying, frankly, that Marx and Engels essentially make a mistake in projecting this pertinent issue for the era of antagonism between mental and physical labor back onto the origin of human society. The great original human _material_ advantage compared with other primates is the ability to _pass on_ how to make a wheel. In other words, _not_ having to _re_invent the wheel because the original invention can be passed on to you via culture is the critically unique human ability. Allowing future generations to share the experiences of ancestors is a great _material_ advantage for the species, and the main , original distinguishing characterisitic of our species. To get back to your original point again, that there
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Charles, in that quote from German Ideology below, ME refer to producing their *means* of subsistence, as in means of production, not the subsistence itself, as in gathered berries or hunted game, which as you point out humans did not domesticate until quite recently. Wouldn't social labor - including tools, like baskets and spears, as well as language to plan expeditions, and culture to pass on knowledge to future generations - count as means of subsistence? We of course know far more today about what pre-historic human life was like than anyone in the 19th Century did - or at least we have much more archeological data - but I think ME were on the right track on this one. I don't think they would disagree with your point about culture and language, which I think enhances their essential point about human social labor - the ability to produce - being the core difference between humans and animals. - Steve At 04:11 PM 5/31/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Steve Gabosch quotes: Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. ^ CB: Actually this isn't quite true. The first human modes of production are termed hunting and gathering because humans do not produce their own subsistence, but rather gather what nature has produced without human intervention. , so to speak. That doesn't happen until tens of thousands of years after the origin of the human species with horticulture, farming and domestication of animals. I'm not sure what implication this has for our dialectics and nature discussion What distinguishes humans from other animials is culture, language and methods of passing on experiences from one generation to the next. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Well, if you got my point (2), the rest shouldn't be so mysterious. ME openly admit they're not going to tackle directly either the natural sciences as an intellectual enterprise or their objects of study (laws of nature). At the same time they admit that's part of the picture, though they are specifically beginning their studies from the standpoint of historical materialism. That's a pretty damn important point, esp. for those who would make claims about Marx's attitude to science. As I recall, at that stage, Marx only really considers science as something that plays a role in industry--man's advanced interchange with nature. Science as an intellectual activity in itself, as theorizing, method, or research, is not part of the picture at this time. Hence, ME do not turn their attention to the philosophy of the natural sciences. I'll add to that: when Marx makes remarks criticizing prior materialism, this belongs to the history of philosophy, not actual modern science. Discussing Epicurus and Democritus or the French materialists is not engaging with science. I'll add also, that a philosophy of nature is not a philosophy of science, if a perspective on scientific methodology as a means of understanding nature is not included in it. BTW, Marx's early writings (vol. 1) includes some outline of Hegel's philosophy of nature. But I don't really know how Marx may have used Hegel's PN. Does anyone know something I don't? At 12:06 AM 5/30/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: Steve responds to a post from Ralph: Ralph: on 5/29/2005 at 12:48 PM Ralph explained, referring to the passage from ME copied below: ... Note that ME state that natural preconditions antedate historical analysis, but they are not going to delve into them at this point. Two conclusions follow: (1) Nature is not merely a social category for Marx as some claim; (2) Marx doesn't take the trouble at this point to investigate natural science and especially not its objective correlate as an activity in itself, since the question at hand is the organization of man's practical interaction with nature in conjunction with social organization. But doesnt practical interaction include natural scientific research, methodology, and theory? It must, of course, ... Steve: I am with Ralph so far, but I am puzzled by where Ralph goes next: Ralph: ... but note that Marx is onto the direct, practical transformation of nature as it applies to material production and not that aspect of it that deals with specialized scientific activity. Note the plural references to physical preconditions--nature in general and human physiology in particular--that are acknowledged as preconditions and then set aside. Do you see the distinction here? Steve: To be honest, I don't get what point Ralph is trying to make yet, so I guess I have to answer: no - I don't yet see the distinction being made here - sorry! Ralph, if you would be so kind as to explain this distinction ... - Steve ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
they would know how things work without a working experience with them or with things like them. Divine revelation perhaps? Finally, there is no doubt that nature must also include that which is beyond the observed and acted upon and that its existence is important for the creation of a materialist ideology. There are three ways the unknown makes itself felt in material human experience: 1.The fact that human practice and the science that represents it in thought is open ended or, better yet, appears to have no outward limits is a clear indication of the existence of more to nature than that which is treated by our current state of knowledge and practice. 2. The classic observations by Marx in the first chapter of German Ideology (1845) and the Critique of Hegelian Philosophy (1844) that the physical and sensual interface between man a nature in human labour is far more concrete than can ever be represented by even the most developed dialectics. The rational representation of men's activity in the world is then an inherently uncompletable task. 3. Hegel in his discussion of being makes the point that the logical formula A = A has no demonstrable correspondence with actual experience; diversity is an inherent property of identity (Andy B. presents a pretty thorough discussion on this in his The Meaning of Hegel, Chapter iv section, Diversity(essential Identity ) ). The whole basis of all rational activity, all dialectics, conscious and unconscious, deliberated and automatic, is the unity between the essential transitoriness of experienced moments and the determination of identities; qualities, quantities, measure and all the other things we have to know to develop a working model of the world. It's the unity of logical categorization and the essential temporality of immediate experience that fuels the dialectic and makes it so important a tool for exploration of the unknown. Second paragraph: The clarification of what exactly is the significance of the *objective* nature of nature is probably Ilyenkov's most important contributions to Scientific Marxism. Indeed for orthodox Marxists, including Lenin in his earlier writings (prior at very least to his readings in Hegel in 1914 and possibly as early as his article on Emprio-positivism), did indeed inherit the classical materialist concept of the objectivity of nature in the metaphysical sense of the essential being of nature; known, unknown, whatever. Ilyenkov in the last paragraphs of chapter 8 of Dialectical Logic summarizes the reasoning that is the basis of the concept of nature as prior to and independently of humankind. Here he distinguishes between Marx and Engel's theories of human activity and Hegel's idealism by recapitulating their description of man as a product and force of nature that transforms nature into the instruments of his activity in appropriating nature's goods and producing from them the means for the perpetuation of his body organic and inorganic. Nothing could more clearly describe the independence of abstract nature from the emergence of human activity in the world. After all, if man has his origins in the development of the natural world, then nature as a whole precedes and is a prerequisite for human activity. Nature regarded abstractly cannot be described as a product of human activity Then too, the laws and principles of nature whereby men transform nature into the instruments and products of labour are hardly a product of pure logic, of men's unfettered imagination. The laws of nature as men know and accommodate their actions to them are firmly connected to the physical and sensual properties of man the organism and to the natural conditions he confronts in the course of his prosecution of labour activity. Men do not produce in a vacuum which they then fill with ideas and concepts. Nature is a partner with man in his determination and production of his needs, and its presence is identifiable in all human activity in the world. All these descriptions of nature relate directly to the interaction of man with nature as a force of nature, and not one of these statements asserts some sort of universal state of being for nature itself. The activist interpretation of men's relation to the world first proposed by Kant, further developed by Hegel and given a material natural interpretation by Marx and Engels obviates all necessity to make broad ontological statements about the world in order to realize the objects of theory. with Regards, Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Steve Gabosch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 9:35 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! If I am reading Oudeyis correctly, he is saying that nature is determined by human interaction with it; that nature is strictly a product of the unity of human purposive activity and natural conditions; and that nature is a function of human labour. If by nature we are only referring
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
I do not understand the meaning of the three quotes from Ilyenkov. At 02:03 PM 5/30/2005 -0700, Steve Gabosch wrote: ... from my 1977 Progress edition, which I was lucky to get through the internet last year. I corrected a couple scanning errors from the MIA version. Copied from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/essays/essay8.htm from page 283: A consistently materialist conception of thought, of course, alters the approach to the key problems of logic in a cardinal way, in particular to interpretation of the nature of logical categories. Marx and Engels established above all that [the] external world was not given to the individual as it was in itself simply and directly in his contemplation, but only in the course of its being altered by man: and that both the contemplating man himself and the world contemplated were products of history. from page 285: Psychological analysis of the act of reflexion of the external world in the individual head therefore cannot be the means of developing logic. The individual thinks only insofar as he has already mastered the general (logical) determinations historically moulded before him and completely independently of him. And psychology as a science does not investigate the development of human culture or civilisation, rightly considering it a premise independent of the individual. from page 286-287: In labour (production) man makes one object of nature act on another object of the same nature in accordance with their own properties and laws of existence. Marx and Engels showed that the logical forms of man's action were the consequences (reflection) of real laws of human actions on objects, i.e. of practice in all its scope and development, laws that are independent of any thinking. Practice understood materialistically, appeared as a process in whose movement each object involved in it functioned (behaved) in accordance with its own laws, bringing its own form and measure to light in the changes taking place in it. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
in the course of his prosecution of labour activity. Men do not produce in a vacuum which they then fill with ideas and concepts. Nature is a partner with man in his determination and production of his needs, and its presence is identifiable in all human activity in the world. All these descriptions of nature relate directly to the interaction of man with nature as a force of nature, and not one of these statements asserts some sort of universal state of being for nature itself. The activist interpretation of men's relation to the world first proposed by Kant, further developed by Hegel and given a material natural interpretation by Marx and Engels obviates all necessity to make broad ontological statements about the world in order to realize the objects of theory. with Regards, Oudeyis - Original Message - From: Steve Gabosch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Sunday, May 29, 2005 9:35 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! If I am reading Oudeyis correctly, he is saying that nature is determined by human interaction with it; that nature is strictly a product of the unity of human purposive activity and natural conditions; and that nature is a function of human labour. If by nature we are only referring to that portion of reality that humanity consciously observes and/or acts upon, then Oudeyis successfully makes that point. But this conception of reality restricts nature to human experience, which can only be a subset of nature. Nature must also include that which is beyond the observed and acted upon. The unknown - the not yet experienced - must also be taken into account in the creation of a materialist ontology. It is certainly true that humans only consciously experience that portion of nature they observe and/or act on through the lens of culture and the plethora of human activity, a key idea in Ilyenkov's concept of the ideal.But how humanity, through its social relations, activities, languages, etc. *subjectively* experiences nature (individually or collectively) is a different question than the *objective* nature of nature itself. I can see little room for doubt that all these Marxists insisted upon making this fundamental distinction. They maintained that nature exists prior to and independently of humankind, holding the ontological view that nature also includes that which humankind has not yet - and may never - experience. I am aware of no evidence to support Oudeyis's claim that the conception of nature held by these classical Marxists was restricted to only that which humans have interacted with and/or laboured on. - Steve At 07:09 AM 5/26/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: Marx and Engels adopted Hegel's activist determination of nature as a product of the interaction of man with nature (human purposive intervention in nature) , but revised it to include that human intervention as a force of nature rather than just an exercise of intellect. For Marx, Engels, and Lenin the objective, materialist determination of the nature of nature must be regarded as strictly a dialectical product of the unity of human practical activity with the natural conditions that are the subject of that activity, i.e. as a function of human labour. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 267.2.0 - Release Date: 27/05/05 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 267.2.0 - Release Date: 27/05/05 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Forum for the discussion of theoretical issues raised by Karl Marx andthe thinkers he inspired' marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 6:04 PM Subject: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! [Marxism-Thaxis] Oudeyis -clip- Describing their accomplishment in a dialectical form, the materialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin is not a statement about the world but about the unity of logical and physical and sensual activity in human labour (practice). NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD. ^ CB: For me, this is a good way to say it. I would just add that their attitude was that the best way to conclude what the nature of the world is is to see what works in the world in practice. This is very clever, cunning, desirable to follow, as human's have no interest in the nature of the world except in human interaction with the world. As regards the universality of the laws of dialectics: The abstract laws of dialectics are universalities. We may like McTaggart find them less than perfect, but whatever the modifications, revisions and so on we may make on dialectics is a matter of dealing with universals. That dialectic processes may produce divergent truths is a different issue from the universality of the logical process itself. To understand the emergence of divergent dialectically arrived at truths, we must recognize the diversity of objects and subjects of dialectical activities. Science, the development of practical knowledge, has as its object the realization of men's needs in the transformation of the material world, or, in other words the realization of the needs of men that are ultimately the function of his being a part and force in nature through the transformation of nature in conformance to the specifications implied by those needs. All the components of this description; the object and subject of the activity described, the means and ends of scientific activity, involve states universal to men and to the subject of his activity, hence divergence in science is always a temporary product of differentiated and limited practical experience. For science truth, temporary as it may be, is found in effective practice. ^^ CB: This is fundamental for Marx, Engels , Lenin: Theses on Feurerbach, Anti-Duhring, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. ^ The divergencies of the dialectics of ethics (ideality) on the other hand are an inevitable and irresolvable consequence of all the differentiating forces that emerge in human social life; the gender distinctions, the division of labour, ethnic segregation, and so on. True, the methods of Natural Science of History, Historical Materialism, can provide scientific universals that enable the development of theory and practice to produce, regulate and revise these distinctions, but these universals, theories and practices should never be confused with the arguments of the dialectics of ethics (the main object of Hegel and to a considerable extent of Kant). In general, where we find irreconcilable (in practice) dialectical arguments we have entered into a debate over ethics or ethos rather than over a scientific issue. Dialectical arguments of this sort are properly the realm of religion and traditional philosophy, classic materialism being an example of the latter. Regards, Oudeyis ^^^ CB: What do you think of treating ethics as a category of practice , since ethics deals with what people as does practice ? One of the most interesting and to me attractive aspects of Ilyenkov's (1977 The Concept of the Ideal, 1974 Dialectical Logic, and 1960 Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete) discussion on ideality is the view that Capital is basically a material (or natural scientific) analysis of the ethos and ethics of the capitalist mode of production. I. L. Rubin (1972 -originally 1928 Essays on Marx's Theory of Value) also presents capitalist practice as a working ethical system. Vygotsky (1978 -originally 1930 - Mind in Society) also has a good deal to say on the role of ethics as a means to social ends, particularly as regards the socialization of prospective members of society. Ethics and ethos are social practice. However, the object and means of social practice as ethics are considerably different from the practicalities of science and practical labour. These differences are not always easy to identify since the intellectual tools for theorizing about ethical social practice and about labour practice are virtually the same: e.g. speech forms, texts, graphic representations and of course dialectics. The difference is usually even harder to detect when the subject of theory is social practice. The basic object of ethical theory, and in many
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
- Original Message - From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Sent: Friday, May 27, 2005 6:14 PM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! but what about history of nature? I mean before there wasn't anything that can be qualified as man's interaction withthe world. does in your view dialectics start with the appearance of a species that does not simply adjust itself to nature like other animals but starts changibng it more or less conscioulsy by labour? NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD Whether or not nature has a history is a question for nature, of little relevance for the practical realization of human needs. Man, in order to better determine his needs and the means necessary to realize them investigates through reason and practice (experimentation and informed search) the development of the relevant (essential) incohoate features of the natural world, including those of his own activities. The result is the objective determinations of past events in the natural world and of their relevance to the form and substance of our current needs and to the realization of these in practical activity. The laws and principles as well as the developmental schemas produced by our research into what is called Natural History are a product of and the means for realization of strictly human objectives. Is this a history of nature? Well, we are ourselves an integral part and force of the natural world and the massive array of objects we depend on for perpetuation of our life activity have their ultimate origin in nature, but that's a far cry from arguing that human beings and their essential equipage is identical with the totality of nature or that our activity in nature involves nature as a whole. Regards, Oudeyis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 267.0.0 - Release Date: 27/05/05 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.322 / Virus Database: 267.2.0 - Release Date: 27/05/05 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
- Original Message - From: Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 7:45 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics! Interesting post! But I don't understand all of it. Comments interleaved . . . At 07:09 AM 5/26/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: In regards to this thread on emergence and dialectics: Your discussion (the whole thread) on dialectics and emergence conflates several contradictory objectives: the dialectics of dialectics, i.e. the essence of emergence in Marxist theory; the determination of the substantiality of emergence in nature as such, and the broader question of the relation of dialectics to nature. Well, I do jump from topic to topic depending on the focus of the moment, but I'm not sure I conflate objectives. The whole thread is, however, rife with conflation. I was referring to the discussion in general, not to your contribution in particular. Several points: 1. The essence of emergence in Marxist theory is the logical process whereby any judgement (for Marx and Hegel alike) regarding the particularities of any universal inevitably sets that particularity against the universal. The negation is that totality of the universal that is left out by the particular judgement. The emergent or what is called by Engels the negation of the negation is the determination of another particularity that includes the original judgement within an action that incorporates that part of the universal that negates the original judgement. All this logical activity is at least for Marx and Engels is what practice; physical/sensual and intellectual is all about. I don't understand the above. The logic of dialectics is essentially the logic of emergence (see next response, below) that is itself the emergent product of a system of emergent categories of logical activity. Having said this (the least important part of the paragraph) we can address the central issue of the description of dialectics. Yeah, back to kindergarten, but it appears that we need some basic reacquaintance with the subject. Hegel regarded dialectics as thought (hence he is, children, an idealist). Marx and Engels, while agreeing with Hegel's logic, argued that it while it effectively represented the active relation of man to nature Hegel's restriction of logic to thought obviated the actual interface between man and nature the physical and sensual dimensions of men's interaction with nature. Clearly, Marx and Engels were not here discussing what nature is all about, but about how logic is manifest in the whole range of men's activities in the world; physical, sensual and intellectual. Still, it's hard to give up old habits, both for idealists and materialists alike (even Marxists regard themselves as having sacred traditions). Millennia of arguing whether the world is ideal or material has made a very deep impression on the thinking of Europeans, and particularly on European intellectuals. At the turn of the last century the two most Hegelian of the Marxist theoreticians had great difficulty in adopting the idea that Marx and Engels were concerned with how men act in and with the world and not with the nature of the world. I suggest that Plekhanov's later Neo-Kantian tendencies arose out of the contradictions implicit in his identification of the dialectic as the mechanism of change of an ontologically material world. Even Lenin's realization of the actual significance came in stages. He began life as a Plekhanov materialist and appears to have only become aware of the dangers of classical materialism in the course of his opposition to the Neo-positivism of the Machists (1908). Even then, I doubt if he really became aware of the full distinction between Marxian and classical materialism until after 1914, after he read and digested fully Hegel's writings on logic and the Philosophy of Right. Lenin's final stand on the issue of dialectics was that it is logic, the theory of human knowledge, and the development of human interaction with nature through labour in all its aspects; conscious and unconscious, individual and collective, and material and intellectual. The issue as to whether nature itself, whatever that may actually mean, is of no interest to Marxian theory since, among other things, it has no real value for the practical objectives of scientific theory of history, the determination of the objectives of revolutionary policy. The fact that the question, is nature dialectical? can still arise in Marxist circles is an indication that we are still very much at the kindergarten stage of learning Hegel and Marx and Engel's use of dialectics. It's like asking whether the world is material or ideal, whether man is truly good or bad and other such childlike questions that were made anachronistic by the works of Kant, Hegel, and Marx and Engels more than a century and a half ago. When we discuss the emergent
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics of the new class or communist class (2)!
Part 2 Dialectics of the new class or communist class I am proud to be part of the communist movement and none of our errors, mistakes and lapses in judgment comes close on the scale of history to the murderous actions of the bourgeoisie and my very own imperial bourgeoisie. The politics of world communism as viewed from my own history as American and the most bourgeois of all bourgeois working classes is interesting. A brief summary is in order. Historically there was an objective communist movement as human history, because of the low means of development of the material power of production or as a social form of organization in correspondence to a primitive state of development of the material power of production. The greatest part of human experiences was carried on within/as some communist form of social organization. Mona Lisa was not a man and communism ain't Marxism, although it is a science current within the struggle for communism in the epoch of capitalism or the epoch of the bourgeoisie. Since the down fall and breakup of primitive communism, the communist movement has been the sum total of people who joined and became part of the social assertion believing in some form of communism. Since such a movement rests on thoughts, feelings, visions, dreams or conviction, the communist movement as groups of people organized for this goal has been subjective or ideological; a material striving of individuals and sectarian groups with a vision. The communist movement as a vision expressed the past as a lived experience of humanity, projected into the future. There however was no class aggregate consciously or unconsciously fighting for communism or driven to spontaneous demand the stated economic and political goals of communism, nor had society advance to a state of infrastructure evolution to transcend commodity exchange and value in the minds of men (men as the initial class aggregate owners of instruments of production). The bourgeoisie is a man born without convictions, casting off the existing convictions he is asked to inherit and then he creates the modern and his convictions as correspondence to what created him as it evolves. The it is the complexity we call society but its primacy or fundamentality is viewed as the material power of production and its various forms of ownership rights. The epoch of the bourgeoisie means he is it as the flesh and primary owner. The bourgeoisie and proletariat as a unity emerged welding instruments of production that created new social organization, new forms of wealth, real products as the force of exchange and battle cries of freedom for this new way of life to be what it could be. This concrete economic relationship evolved within the framework of feudalism not simply as potential of the new productive forces but as the actual emergence, working and reorganization of people around a new technology regime and system of product exchange. The schematic presentation of the bourgeoisie as a scattered producer, then a middle class in feudal society; as guild owners and sturdy men of means and fortitude that advance lockstep with the development of the material power of production is an excellent explanation . . . after the fact and formation of the bourgeoisie as the social power of privately owned capital. The actual formation of the capitalist class and workers in unity as the new technological regime was more varied and complex but the abstraction as explanation holds true. There will not be, nor can there be, any concrete forms of communist economic and social organization as society within the framework of bourgeois social organization. We are not going to be able to grow a small communism in America and watch it get big and over take bourgeois production. Thus, the communist of my hue never scream bloody murder against reformism because the primary classes of a social system are locked in a life and death battle to reform the system in each others favor/flava. Rather, we speak of the revolutionary struggle for reform because our power as a force of history lies in our continuous and enlarging combination of communist visionaries. Revolutionary combination due to association. The bourgeoisie and proletariat as a unity went to work everyday as bourgeoisie and proletariat within the crumbling environment of feudal society. There was an objective bourgeois historical movement within the environment of the destruction of feudal society as concrete material relations of (re)production, exchange, and distribution. There were also always people who believed in communism because there were always people who believed in communism because that is where we come from. Communism lives in our hearts and had to be trained out of us. Since there has been no objective economic movement of the mass of people, as rising class aggregates, for communism during the rising and
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
First see my reply to Steve Gabosch. I would also suggest that your conclusion requires clarification: Of course, this unifrom worldview as an epistemological claim has something to do with class ineterests. Therefore, it is not surprising that Marxism is subject distortions. But how far can this distortion can go? If the laws of dialectics are objective, then it is not wrong to suppose that they bring themselves permanently to the fore. In other words, there are limits to this distortion. In my previous response I related the class interests and epistemological claims to the socialization of intellectuals in the division of labor. I would say that class interests most often get expressed indirectly, and the 'class interests' of intellectuals in the realm of their intellectual work that is not explicitly about class interests has to do with their mode of socialization and self-preservation. Otherwise I am reluctant to equate class interests with epistemology in a directly partisan way, since most intellectuals are actually unaware and completely clueless about their presuppositions, and are themselves in most cases helpless victims rather than perpetrators of their tacit assumptions. You know, I deal with these people in Washington and I can't stand them, but the majority of them are too clueless to be held culpable; it would be like holding soap opera addicts culpable for their substandard tastes and lack of critical acumen. I mean, you can get mad at them for being stupid, but they don't know any better. I don't understand your claims about the objectivity of dialectical laws asserting themselves in the end. Greater clarity is needed here. At 01:53 AM 5/25/2005 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve Gabosch wrote: I appreciate Ralph's recent thoughts, and Charles's responses. For my part, I agree with Engels (and Marx) that nature is dialectical. As I see it, this classical Marxist claim is first and foremost an ontological statement about the nature of reality, and must be seen in terms of a *materialist* dialectical worldview. From this foundational worldview, the epistemological problem of how to develop dialectical knowledge (concepts, etc.) follows, and in turn, dialectical logic and other forms of conscious dialectical knowledge become possible to discover and analyze. In other words, the logical development of the materialist dialectic itself flows from nature to society to thought. Historically, humanity and its known thinkers have discovered important wisdoms about our dialectical material world, society and minds, here and there, many times over, but it was not until Marx, Engels, the modern proletarian communist movement and the modern proletariat entered history - and the end of class society could become a possibility - that dialectical materialism could emerge as a worldview. This worldview has certainly been dogmatized and reduced to trivialities in the hands of some, especially those who wielded so-called Marxist governments as weapons of repression and purge, greatly heating up personal and political tension around these philosophical questions to this day. Even just Marxist terminology can evoke strong feelings, such as my (for some, provocative) association of dialectical materialism with proletarian communism. And of course, bourgeois society has heaped enormous distortional derision on Marxist ideas of all types since the beginning of Marxian communism. It takes serious effort to navigate these obstacles and learn and comprehend Marxist theory at all, let alone form an intelligent opinion about whether nature is dialectical or what being dialectical at all means. I think the point is well taken - but still possible to overstate - that even the most advanced philosophical and scientific work on the materialist dialectic is still rudimentary. So much work lies ahead. My take on emergentism is that it has great potential to enhance and advance the effort to unify philosophy and science on dialectical, materialist and socialist principles. To reiterate my basic take on dialectics: I think beginning with the concept that nature is dialectical, as Marx and Engels did, is the right place to start, because it places one squarely in the dialectical materialist and proletarian communist worldview. I agree with every single sentence. I think without this ontological claim that the laws of dialectics are universal, working in different forms in nature, society and thought there can hardly any uniform worldview. One needs just to consider all the difficulties of Barkely, Kant and Hegel to come to this conclusion. B had to bring en external force called god into play to be able to suppose that there is an order in nature. K left out the idea of uniformity in nature. H equated nature to thought. Of course, this unifrom worldview as an epistemological claim has something to do with class ineterests.
Re: [marxistphilosophy] marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Very interesting. It is difficult to judge Korsch, Pennekoek, or Lenin from these fragments alone. A more detailed study of all three is indicated, I see. Just a few hurried notes on the Korsch piece. He never conceived of the difference between the historical materialism of Marx and the previous forms of materialism as an unbreachable opposition arising from a real conflict of classes. He conceived it rather as a more or less radical expression of one continuous revolutionary movement. Thus Lenin's materialistic criticism of Mach and the Machians, according to Pannekoek, failed even in its purely theoretical purpose mainly because Lenin attacked the later attempts of bourgeois naturalistic materialism not from the viewpoint of the historical materialism of the fully developed proletarian class, but from a proceeding and scientifically less developed phase of bourgeois materialism. There is an obscurity here in delineating the precise relationship between the development of materialism and class conflict. He fully acknowledges the tactical necessity, under the conditions in pre-revolutionary Czarist Russia, of Lenin's relentless fight against the left bolshevik, Bogdanov, and other more or less outspoken followers of Mach's ideas who in spite of their good revolutionary intentions actually jeopardised the unity and weakened the proven revolutionary energy of the Marxist party by a revision of its monolithic materialistic ideology. Korsch cites Pannekoek's view, which seems from an intellectual standpoint lacking in integrity, and then disagrees with it politically: In fact, Pannekoek goes somewhat further in his positive appreciation of Lenin's philosophical tactics of 1908 than seems justified to this writer even in a retrospective analysis of the past. If he had investigated, in his critical revision of Lenin's anti-Machist fight, the tendencies represented by the Russian Machists as well as those of their German rnasters he might have been warned against the unimpeachable correctness of Lenin's attitude in the ideological struggles of 1908 by a later occurrence. When Lenin, after 1908, was through with the Machist opposition which had arisen within the central committee of the Bolshevik party itself, he regarded that whole incident as closed. Then a recitation of the sins perpetrated later by other Leninists in comdemning Bogdanov, which are redolent of Stalinist rhetoric. The description of Bogdanov's philosophical position is no more edifying. Korsch laments Lenin's attack against positivism as a development of materialism. Furthermore, he judges it to be opportunistic: This fallacy is that the militant character of a revolutionary materialist theory can and must be maintained against the weakening influences of other apparently hostile theoretical tendencies by any means to the exclusion of modifications made imperative by further scientific criticism and research. This fallacious conception caused Lenin to evade discussion on their merits of such new scientific concepts and theories that in his judgement jeopardised the proved fighting value of that revolutionary (though not necessarily proletarian revolutionary) materialist philosophy that his Marxist party had adopted, less from Marx and Engels than from their philosophical teachers, the bourgeois materialists from Holbach to Feuerbach and their idealistic antagonist, the dialectical philosopher Hegel. Rather he stuck to his guns, preferring the immediate practical utility of a given ideology to its theoretical truth in a changing world. This doctrinaire attitude, by the way, runs parallel to Lenin's political practice. Indeed, such instrumentalism is fallacious, but is this a correct portrayal of Lenin's attitude towards scientific developments? I would add that one of the problems with the Marxist tradition is the general problem of the uneven development of science with respect to philosophy. A person that knows only one of these is generally ill-equipped to tackle the other. The moment Marxism was established institutionally as a body of thought, largely in the hands of the German Social Democrats, this problem was created, not by them specifically, but by the overall social fragmentation responsible for the fragmentation of intellectual trends. Further, the problem of uneven development was exacerbated by the importation of Marxism into backward Russia. I am puzzled by the following argument: It is a long way from Lenin's violent philosophical attack on Mach and Avenarius's idealistic positivism and empiriocriticism to that refined scientific criticism of the latest developments within the positivist camp which was published in 1938 in the extremely cultured periodical of the English Communist party.[8] Yet there is underlying this critical attack on the most progressive form of modern positivistic thought the same old Leninist fallacy. The critic
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
I don't think anyone has paid attention to a word I've said, but I am intrigued by this intervention, particularly the key assertion: NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD. I am puzzled by the conclusion, though: In general, where we find irreconcilable (in practice) dialectical arguments we have entered into a debate over ethics or ethos rather than over a scientific issue. Dialectical arguments of this sort are properly the realm of religion and traditional philosophy, classic materialism being an example of the latter. I don't get it. At 04:08 PM 5/25/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: It appears that we've regressed once more back to the issue of the ontology of nature, i.e. the question of what IS nature. First let me bore you with a brief bit of history: After nearly centuries of ferocious dialogue between those who argued that the world is essentially ideal and those who asserted that the real world is that of the spirit, Descartes proposed that the subject matter of philosophy be changed from the nature of being to the nature of knowing. Descartes by his argument that the world is essentially material, but is given essence by the spirit of intellect is more or less a precursor of Kant. Over against Descartes, Spinoza (drawing from his intimate acquaintance of Muslim and Jewish philosophy) rejected the typically Western European differentiation of body and soul and presented the view that the world unites both materia (i.e extension) and intellect as two united dimensions of the same universe. At the turn of the century (18th and 19th that is) Kant once again changes the rules of thinking about things. Instead of examining the relationship of abstract knowledge to the world (there virtually being none in the purviews of Berkeley and Hume) he proposed to examine the relation of the activity of knowing, i.e. the use of the essential tool of knowledge formation, logic, to man's sensual perception of the world. Not surprisingly he found virtually no relation at all so he proposed that universal knowledge (the intersubjective transcendental ideas) is a function of the universality of the organ of knowledge, the human brain and its products. Hegel's objection to Kant's formulation is based on Kant's almost mathematical abstraction of logic, hence of human thought from concrete experience. Yes, Hegel for all his idealism did regard sensual experience as the critical test for the practical value of ideals! For Hegel human thought should include the entire realm of human science and could not be examined by examining the operations of a single human mind. For Hegel the dialectic was the process; intellectual, practical, and social whereby men acquired and developed their knowledge of the real world. Now, to the guts of the issue: For those who have read Marx and Engel's Ad Feuerbach, the 11 short theses whereby Karl and Friedrich declare their rejection of ontological materialism; the materialism of Holbach, of Diderot and of Feuerbach, in favour of a revision of Hegelian Objective Idealism will or should realize that Marx and Engel's were not going back to the tired (Lenin called them, silly) arguments of mechanical materialism. In essence Marx and Engel's (and Lenin after 1914) adopted the Kantian and Hegelian revisionist views of the object of philosophy as the study of how men interact with their world rather than in trying to determine the real nature of that world or the relation of that world to human thought. Their basic disagreement with Kant and Hegel rests on the latters' determination that human interaction, indeed that human knowledge is purely a function of ideation. To correct Hegel's basically correct view of the science of history as a study of the intellectual, practical and social process by which men acquired and developed their knowledge of the real world, they presented arguments showing that logic (i.e. dialectics) extends to all aspects of human interaction with nature; physical, sensual, and intellectual. Describing their accomplishment in a dialectical form, the materialism of Marx, Engels and Lenin is not a statement about the world but about the unity of logical and physical and sensual activity in human labour (practice). NOTE, THAT THE ISSUE OF THE RELEVANCE OF LOGIC (DIALECTICS) TO HUMAN HISTORY IS NOT A MATTER OF THE NATURE OF THE WORLD BUT OF MAN'S INTERACTION WITH THE WORLD. As regards the universality of the laws of dialectics: The abstract laws of dialectics are universalities. We may like McTaggart find them less than perfect, but whatever the modifications, revisions and so on we may make on dialectics is a matter of dealing with universals. That dialectic processes may produce divergent truths is a different issue from the universality of the logical process itself. To understand the emergence of divergent
:evins Lewontin (was Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!)
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Interesting post! But I don't understand all of it. Comments interleaved . . . At 07:09 AM 5/26/2005 +0200, Oudeyis wrote: In regards to this thread on emergence and dialectics: Your discussion (the whole thread) on dialectics and emergence conflates several contradictory objectives: the dialectics of dialectics, i.e. the essence of emergence in Marxist theory; the determination of the substantiality of emergence in nature as such, and the broader question of the relation of dialectics to nature. Well, I do jump from topic to topic depending on the focus of the moment, but I'm not sure I conflate objectives. The whole thread is, however, rife with conflation. Several points: 1. The essence of emergence in Marxist theory is the logical process whereby any judgement (for Marx and Hegel alike) regarding the particularities of any universal inevitably sets that particularity against the universal. The negation is that totality of the universal that is left out by the particular judgement. The emergent or what is called by Engels the negation of the negation is the determination of another particularity that includes the original judgement within an action that incorporates that part of the universal that negates the original judgement. All this logical activity is at least for Marx and Engels is what practice; physical/sensual and intellectual is all about. I don't understand the above. When we discuss the emergent properties of the dialectic we are discussing labour or man's interaction with nature as a force of nature and not nature as such. OK, but I don't get the meaning of the phrase emergent properties of the dialectic. 2. Marx and Engel's argument against Feuerbach's (and the classical Materialists in general) was both substantial and practical. Feuerbach, following Holbach and the French materialists interpreted materialism as a description or determination of the essence of nature as such, as its being or state. This is a strictly contemplative representation of nature, that is, nature without human intervention. I don't see this. I see the problem this way: that stage of the development of materialism is inadequate to grasp the nature of human activity, both practical and cognitive. Labels such as 'nature as such' or 'contemplative' don't work for me without such clarification, though it does seem that your characterization here is consistent with me though apparently not synonymous. The old materialism, as well as the course of development of modern natural science, is such that it begins with the study of the lowest levels of the organization of matter and works its way up. But once it works its way up to the human species itself as an object of study, its intellectual limitations become manifest. And I think this is where Marx intervenes. Marx and Engels adopted Hegel's activist determination of nature as a product of the interaction of man with nature (human purposive intervention in nature) , but revised it to include that human intervention as a force of nature rather than just an exercise of intellect. OK. For Marx, Engels, and Lenin the objective, materialist determination of the nature of nature must be regarded as strictly a dialectical product of the unity of human practical activity with the natural conditions that are the subject of that activity, i.e. as a function of human labour. OK. The difference between the contemplative and the activist concepts of the nature of nature is critical. The contemplative view is fundamentally a statement of faith, a revelation of the nature of the world, while the activist concept has its origins and its proof in world changing (Lenin and Ilyenkov call it revolutionary) activity. The wording of your argument is not sufficiently precise to me to be compelling, but vaguely I could agree. Since we are dealing here with the philosophy of science and not theology, and Marxist philosophy of science at that, we interpret the affirmation of the truth of the material nature of nature of classical materialism as having its origins in ethical (ethos) activity rather than in some revelation from on high. I don't quite get this. 3. The classic substantiation of the dialectical method ( emergent logic if you so wish it) is of course Marx's Capital. Here and there Marx and Marx and Engels played around with more general substantiations of the method, particularly in the German Ideology, the Grundrisse, and Engel's rather disastrous investigations of the dialectics of the family, but they never actually came out with a Logic, a theory about theorizing. I'm not sure why Engels' analysis of the family is disastrous. Marx of course never write his promised little treatise on dialectical method. So you don[t consider Engels' voluminous writings about dialectic a logic or theory about theorizing? Lenin certainly felt there was a need for such a logic, and Evald Ilyenkov's cumulated works
marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Charles: However, there is also in the book a clear description of a meeting between Einstein and Mach late in Mach's life, out of which Einstein firmly disagrees with Mach on the issue of the reality of atoms. Justin: Right. Mach was the last skeptic. Einstein won his Nobel by proving their reality. Jim: He got his Nobel for his paper on photoelectricity which he showed could be explained using Max Planck's quantum hypothesis. In reality, the Committee was rewarding him for his work on relativity, but relativity theory was still considered to be very controversial to be cited as the rationale for granting him the Prize. ^ CB: Einstein also had a famous paper on Brownian Motion ( no relation), which is a movement of atoms. ^ Charles:Mach thinks atoms are thoughts not objectively existing. Einstein disagrees, believing in the objective reality of atoms. In other words, Einstein agrees with Lenin on the central point upon which Lenin criticizes Mach's empirio-criticism. Justin: Look, it is possoble to disbelieve in the existence of a particular theoretical entity without being an idealist in general. I might deny the existence of superstrings without going all Berkeley. Charles: The demonstration that Mach is an idealist in general is the main thesis of Lenin's book _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_. I don't know whether a reiteration of the main arguments is worthwhile here. Jim: In the case of Mach, he was insistent that scientific concepts must be definable in observational terms. By doing so, he maintained that physics could be purged of all extraneous metaphysical and theological notions. Thus, in his *The Science of Mechanics*, he delivered his famous critique of the concept of force, and he also challenged the absolutes (of space and time) that were foundational for Newtonian physics. And it was also, precisely on this basis that he objected to atomic theory, since he didn't think that the concept of atoms was definable in observational terms.In other words, he seemed to think that the concept was metaphysical. ^^ CB: One thinks of Marx's comments about the need for abstraction to make up for inability to directly observe in certain aspects of science. Marx was talking about political economy, but it applies to natural sciences. Just as the fact that we cannot as individuals directly observe the _whole_ of economic life doesn't thwart a science of it, neither does the indirect inference of the existence of atoms mean that they are metaphysical concepts. Much of astronomy involves indirect observation and inference. Basically anytime instruments such as microscopes and telescopes are used, there is an inference, not a direct observation. ^^ CB: Einstein essentially has the same position as Lenin on the philosophical dispute Lenin takes up in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ Justin: Not exactly. Einstein is a realist about some things -- spacetime. Atoms. An antirealist about others -- forces. Absolute space and time. A skeptic about Charles: Our terminology is that Einstein is a materialist, with respect to atoms. As Jim points out below, upholding the absoluteness of space and time are not part of what defines a materialist position. Lenin defines materlialism as belief in objective reality outside of our thoughts, not belief in absolute space and time. Jim: Well, Engels was, as I recall, skeptical about absolute space and time. In the twentieth century, Soviet physicists would cite Engels on space and time to show that the relativity was consistent with dialectical materialism, contrary to the claims of some people in Stalin's regime. I am not sure that Lenin's own views on space time would have been much different from Engels'. Justin: A skeptic quantum phenomenoa. His position, aprt from quantaum, was dictated by science rarther than by some preconceived ideology. Charles: Never said Einstein had a preconceived ideology. In fact, the point to be made here is that Einstein's arriving at a materialist ( your realist) position based on, as you say, the dictation of science, is pretty powerful independent corroboration of the Engels-Lenin philosophy of science positions. Without starting out thinking as Engels and Lenin, the great thinker and scientist ,Einstein ,arrives at the same conclusions as Engels and Lenin, and based on actual scientific work, very high quality scientific experience. Justin: With quantum, however, he could not free himself of determinism as an a priori position. It may matter that the special and general theories of relativist are deterministic. Anyway, one thing taht is clkear in MEC is that Lenin is willing to dismiss scientific theories on philosophical grounds -- as Einstein did quantum -- but that Einstein was not usually willing to do this. CB: What scientific theory does Lenin dismiss on philosophical grounds in MEC ? None. He criticizes empirio-criticism, a
Re: [marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
In the case of Mach, he was insistent that scientific concepts must be definable in observational terms. By doing so, he maintained that physics could be purged of all extraneous metaphysical and theological notions. Thus, in his *The Science of Mechanics*, he delivered his famous critique of the concept of force, and he also challenged the absolutes (of space and time) that were foundational for Newtonian physics. But he thought that talk of AS made sense even if it was not shown by Newton's bucket experiment, he just made the point that there was another reading of the bucket experiment that had not occurred to Newton. So he was bo=t narrow-minded about theoretical entities, just wanted themto have observational cash value. jhks __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
Some comments interleaved: At 12:16 PM 5/20/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Charles: The demonstration that Mach is an idealist in general is the main thesis of Lenin's book _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_. I don't know whether a reiteration of the main arguments is worthwhile here. . ^^ CB: One thinks of Marx's comments about the need for abstraction to make up for inability to directly observe in certain aspects of science. Marx was talking about political economy, but it applies to natural sciences. Just as the fact that we cannot as individuals directly observe the _whole_ of economic life doesn't thwart a science of it, neither does the indirect inference of the existence of atoms mean that they are metaphysical concepts. Much of astronomy involves indirect observation and inference. Basically anytime instruments such as microscopes and telescopes are used, there is an inference, not a direct observation. I don't think it was just the existence of atoms at stake. Mach was stuck in the rut of phenomenalism. Dodging the materialist position, Mach attempted to redefine matter as permanent possibilities of sensation. CB: Einstein essentially has the same position as Lenin on the philosophical dispute Lenin takes up in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ .. Charles: Our terminology is that Einstein is a materialist, with respect to atoms. As Jim points out below, upholding the absoluteness of space and time are not part of what defines a materialist position. Lenin defines materlialism as belief in objective reality outside of our thoughts, not belief in absolute space and time. I believe you are correct here. Charles: Never said Einstein had a preconceived ideology. In fact, the point to be made here is that Einstein's arriving at a materialist ( your realist) position based on, as you say, the dictation of science, is pretty powerful independent corroboration of the Engels-Lenin philosophy of science positions. Without starting out thinking as Engels and Lenin, the great thinker and scientist ,Einstein ,arrives at the same conclusions as Engels and Lenin, and based on actual scientific work, very high quality scientific experience. I would word this differently. First, scientific conclusions and philosophical conclusions are not identical. Einstein in many respects converged with the (Marxist) materialist position in rejecting empiricism and inductivism. His early interest in Mach was based on the operationalization of basic concepts, hence a rethinking of the empirical meaning of time. Beyond that, Einstein rejected Mach's positivist philosophy. Einstein himself said that scientists are philosophical opportunists, taking from various philosophies what is useful to them. But yes, generically he can certainly be classified as a materialist. Einstein was a physicist, let's not forget, and while he wrote about economics and social affairs, and occasionally commented on the mind-body problem, he never worked out a position and thus never had anything to say about emergentism that I'm aware of. Engels Lenin corroborate Einstein in the generic sense that both realized early on that scientific developments were going to force a new conception of science. This has happened in a variety of ways. See for example Milic Capek's (1961?) book on the philosophical impact of contemporary physics, as only one example. Now physics and cosmology are in a turmoil, and physicists are openly admitting the need for a revolutionary new theory to account for dark matter/energy. They seem to be tremendously naive philosophically, but the beauty of even the most confused science are the mechanisms of accountability for making empirical data cohere with mathematical formalisms, constructing some kind of physical models, however bizarre, so that science can progress even when people don't really know what they're talking about. . CB: What scientific theory does Lenin dismiss on philosophical grounds in MEC ? None. He criticizes empirio-criticism, a philosophical theory. He doesn't criticize any physical theories, Mach's or others, in MEC. He only says the new physical theories of that period are not a basis for ditching materialism ( your realism), as Mach does. I believe you are correct here. Justin: As for Einstein's realims it was case by case. Einstein took no position on materialism, the idea that everything in the world is in some sense material. Charles: Lenin's definition of materialism in MEC is belief in the existence of objective reality. Einstein believes in the objective reality of atoms, which he specifically disputed with Mach, who coincidently was the main target of Lenin's book on the general issue that the atoms issue is a specific example of. Einstein made some statements that evince belief in God. That would be non-materialism. Lenin terms Mach a Kantian , i.e. dualist, shamefaced materialist, agnostic.
Re: marxistphilosophy] Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
CB: One thinks of Marx's comments about the need for abstraction to make up for inability to directly observe in certain aspects of science. Empiricists, hard-boiled phenomenalists, Berkleyean idealists, etc., don't object to the use of sbatrction in science. They wouldn't do science any differently (more the most part). (Mach, fore example, was a very distinguished scientist.) It's just the interpretation they put on those abstractions. After decades oif arguing this in philoshophy I amn wondering why the debate matters. Mach was stuck in the rut of phenomenalism. Dodging the materialist position, Mach attempted to redefine matter as permanent possibilities of sensation. He says he doiesn't do this. He is quite explicit that his elements are not sensastions and could bt physical. Carnap and later Nelson Goodman took the same line. Part of what mach was about as a proto logical positivist (and this is crystalline in Carnap, who was an LP), is that taking old metaphysical positions is pointless because they can't be sdoved by anything with an empirical consequence. So why not take Mach at his word that he is not a phenomenalist? Lenin defines materlialism as belief in objective reality outside of our thoughts, not belief in absolute space and time. I usedto to that. Now Ia gree with Rorty that the materialist position so defined is meaningless, unintelligible, and pointless. Some things are real and independent of our minds -- spacetime, atoms. Some things are real and not independent of our minds -- classes. Some things are realand independent of our minds and not material -- numberrs. God, if she exists. Some things are real but not independent of our minds -- our minds, for one. The issue is really to be decided entirely on a case by case basis. What does it add to the list of all the things we think are real because we have scientific or other reasons to think they are real, whether or not they are indeoendent of our minds or are material, to say,a nd the World Is Real And Independent Of Out Minds? What is at stake in this claim or its denial? In fact, the point to be made here is that Einstein's arriving at a materialist ( your realist) position based on, as you say, the dictation of science, Not the samething. Can be realistic about nonmaterial things. is pretty powerful independent corroboration of the Engels-Lenin philosophy of science positions. Without starting out thinking as Engels and Lenin, the great thinker and scientist ,Einstein ,arrives at the same conclusions as Engels and Lenin, He must be right then. CB: What scientific theory does Lenin dismiss on philosophical grounds in MEC ? None. He criticizes empirio-criticism, a philosophical theory. Have to look this but, been years, but i am sure there is more than one. He doesn't criticize any physical theories, Mach's or others, in MEC. He only says the new physical theories of that period are not a basis for ditching materialism ( your realism), as Mach does. I believe you are correct here. Justin: As for Einstein's realims it was case by case. Einstein took no position on materialism, the idea that everything in the world is in some sense material. Charles: Lenin's definition of materialism in MEC is belief in the existence of objective reality. Einstein believes in the objective reality of atoms, which he specifically disputed with Mach, who coincidently was the main target of Lenin's book on the general issue that the atoms issue is a specific example of. Einstein made some statements that evince belief in God. That would be non-materialism. Depends on what you mean by GHod. I think he somewhere said he acceptedthe God of Spinoza, Deus sive natura, God or nature. Now whether that is materialist depends on what you think nature includes. Lenin terms Mach a Kantian , i.e. dualist, shamefaced materialist, agnostic. Mack acknowledges the influence of Kant. I don't think there is anything shamefaced ot agnostic about Kant's views on (to be precise) the realisity of the exteernal world. Kant is an empirical realist -- he thinks that there are planets and chairs, etc. They are not collections of Berkleyian ideas. He has an express refitation of Berkeley. AT the same time is is a transcendental idealist. What this means is unclera, but one thing it does NOt mean is that he is agnostic about whether there are things outside our minds. Kant's basic thoufght is that there are things in themselves, i.e., outside our minds. Space and time are not amongthese, thesea re forms of intuition contributed by our minds. Kant does not think we can know anything about things in themselves because to know something about something is to have organized perceptions or theoretical ideas of it, what he calls intutions that are spatially and temporally structured and then conceptually organized. We also contribute, he thinks, concepts of such causality is the most important. So things as they are in
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
On Tue, 17 May 2005 15:46:02 -0400 Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jim Farmelant : -clip- Frank believed that Ernst Mach had exposed the inadequacies of the mechanistic world-view (and indeed there was some convergence between Mach's arguments on that matter and Engels'). And he saw Mach's critique of mechanism as being confirmed by the developments of modern physics (i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics). Frank firmly rejected the view that Mach was some sort of quasi-idealist, arguing on the contrary, that Mach was the most effective critic of idealism. This, of course, put him at odds with Lenin. ^^ CB: On this specific issue, I read an autobiography of Einstein a little while back ( life and times; I forget the author for the moment). There it is asserted that Einstein was definitely inspired by Mach's ideas in reaching the relativity ideas. However, there is also in the book a clear description of a meeting between Einstein and Mach late in Mach's life, out of which Einstein firmly disagrees with Mach on the issue of the reality of atoms. Mach thinks atoms are thoughts not objectively existing. Einstein disagrees, believing in the objective reality of atoms. In other words, Einstein agrees with Lenin on the central point upon which Lenin criticizes Mach's empirio-criticism. Einstein essentially has the same position as Lenin on the philosophical dispute Lenin takes up in _Materialism and Empirio-Criticism_ That's all true, as far as I know. The young Einstein was very much influenced by Mach. Einstein's famous paper, of a century ago, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, (where he first presented his theory of special relativity) has an analysis of the concept of simultaneity, which was very much based on Machist reasoning. The older Einstein became much more critical of Mach. And yes, the older Einstein, was like Lenin, a supporter of scientific realism. BTW while it has long been fashionable among many professional philosophers (including Marxists) to speak disparingly of Lenin's *Materialism and Empirio-Criticism*, there have been a few professional philosophers who have stood up for Lenin. Hilary Putnam, back when he was still a red, used to use Lenin's book as a text in his philosophy of science classes at Harvard. Antony Flew, whose politics are totally unlike Lenin's, has praised Lenin for his defense of physical realism. ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
My recent encounters with Popperians and others reared in dominant traditions of Anglo-American philosophy of science, from which Marxism is excluded, have convinced me that a whole different approach is required. Indeed, a rapprochement between analytical philosophy and dialectical traditions is badly needed, but I envision the task differently from Philipp Frank as well as from the classic expositions of dialectics of nature. Dialectics thinks the totality, the relationships connecting categories, and the structural relations and dependencies of concepts. This is precisely what bourgeois scientific philosophy lacks, and in the social sciences, the lack is egregious. The old (Popperian) saws of testability, criticizability, prediction, etc. are impoverished canons of scientificity, and we need to dig deeper. What matters about dialectics is its overall view of conceptual interrelationships, and for this the old shibboleths of dialectics of nature are kindergarten exercises. But dialectics is also needed to combat the flip side of bourgeois philosophy, mystical organicism a la Bradley, Whitehead, biosemiotics, etc. Engels characterized dialectics as the science of universal interconnection and elsewhere as the process of analysis and synthesis. He had the right idea, which entails a far more subtle level of analysis than the infamous three dialectical laws and hosts of silly examples. Lenin characterized dialectics as the breaking up of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts, which, while not very specific, captures the spirit of the thing. This past weekend our local philosophy group, populated by both camps of bourgeois philosophy, debated the topic of the relationship of philosophy and science. I could not be present due to personal tragedy, but from the synopsis I heard the discussion was pretty sterile. I can thus see the urgency of combining a dialectical perspective with serious (but confused and incomplete) mainstream philosophy of science. Bourgeois thought, including pragmatism, is bankrupt, but it provides the raw materials for a working over by a more comprehensive approach. Further comments interleaved: At 12:08 PM 5/16/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Crosspost :) Charles [Marxism] O, Dialectics! Jim Farmelant It looks like that we are getting on Marxmail, reprisals of some of the great debates concerning Marxist philosophy. In this case, debates over the nature and scope of dialectics and whether or not there is such a thing as the dialectics of nature. Certainly, we have seen from both sides, arguments more than a little reminiscent of the ones featured in the debates of the German Social Democrats of the late 19th century, when Engels and Duhring were duking it out, as well as later on when Lenin and Bogdanov fought over the compatibility of Marxism with Machism, and later when the Mechanists and the Dialecticians fought it out in the Soviet Union during the 1920s (http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg00529. html). It is interesting to note that the logical empiricist physicist/philosopher, Philipp Frank proposed a rapproachment between Machism and dialectical materialism in his 1940s book, *Modern Science and Its Philosophy.* He was certainly critical of diamat as a philosophy of science, regarding it as inferior to his own logical empiricism. On the other hand, like Otto Neurath before him, he was not unsympathetic towards Marxism, at least in its Austro-Marxist form. In *Modern Science and Its Philosophy*, he had a chapter, Logical empiricism and the philosophy of the Soviet Union, in which he presented a surprisingly sympathetic account of diamat; basically treating it as an allied philosophy with logical empiricism. Indeed, he seemed to think that dialectical materialists had always overstated their differences with Machism and that: In reality, Lenin took issue with Machism because it is in many respects related to diamat, and he considered it especially suitable for him to bring out his own teachings very sharply by means of a polemic against it. In Frank's view, the two-sided war that the dialectical materialists were carrying out against both idealism and mechanistic materialism was the very same one that the logical empiricists were engaged in at the same time. This seems like an odd assertion. Carnap completely dismissed all metaphysical concerns, and I don't recall the others in a war with mechanistic materialism. In his view, the dialectical materialists were hampered in this war by their embracing of Engels' three laws of dialectics, which in Frank's view carried the germ of idealism, and which led necessitated, even within the Soviet Union, a perpetual struggle against idealistic deviations. Well, they were hampered in the way they took Engels' formulations as holy writ. And those real scientists who embraced diamat were rendered incapable of rendering their notions
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] O, Dialectics!
On Mon, 16 May 2005 13:25:15 -0400 Ralph Dumain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: My recent encounters with Popperians and others reared in dominant traditions of Anglo-American philosophy of science, from which Marxism is excluded, have convinced me that a whole different approach is required. Indeed, a rapprochement between analytical philosophy and dialectical traditions is badly needed, but I envision the task differently from Philipp Frank as well as from the classic expositions of dialectics of nature. Dialectics thinks the totality, the relationships connecting Further comments interleaved: At 12:08 PM 5/16/2005 -0400, Charles Brown wrote: Crosspost :) Charles [Marxism] O, Dialectics! Jim Farmelant It looks like that we are getting on Marxmail, reprisals of some of the great debates concerning Marxist philosophy. In this case, debates over the nature and scope of dialectics and whether or not there is such a thing as the dialectics of nature. Certainly, we have seen from both sides, arguments more than a little reminiscent of the ones featured in the debates of the German Social Democrats of the late 19th century, when Engels and Duhring were duking it out, as well as later on when Lenin and Bogdanov fought over the compatibility of Marxism with Machism, and later when the Mechanists and the Dialecticians fought it out in the Soviet Union during the 1920s (http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu/msg00529 . html). It is interesting to note that the logical empiricist physicist/philosopher, Philipp Frank proposed a rapproachment between Machism and dialectical materialism in his 1940s book, *Modern Science and Its Philosophy.* He was certainly critical of diamat as a philosophy of science, regarding it as inferior to his own logical empiricism. On the other hand, like Otto Neurath before him, he was not unsympathetic towards Marxism, at least in its Austro-Marxist form. In *Modern Science and Its Philosophy*, he had a chapter, Logical empiricism and the philosophy of the Soviet Union, in which he presented a surprisingly sympathetic account of diamat; basically treating it as an allied philosophy with logical empiricism. Indeed, he seemed to think that dialectical materialists had always overstated their differences with Machism and that: In reality, Lenin took issue with Machism because it is in many respects related to diamat, and he considered it especially suitable for him to bring out his own teachings very sharply by means of a polemic against it. In Frank's view, the two-sided war that the dialectical materialists were carrying out against both idealism and mechanistic materialism was the very same one that the logical empiricists were engaged in at the same time. This seems like an odd assertion. Carnap completely dismissed all metaphysical concerns, and I don't recall the others in a war with mechanistic materialism. I think Frank was following in the footsteps of Neurath here. Neurath, considered himself to be very much a materialist and he objected to the phenominalism that had been popular among the positivists, for among other reasons, because he thought that it could be taken as giving succor to the idealists. Frank believed that Ernst Mach had exposed the inadequacies of the mechanistic world-view (and indeed there was some convergence between Mach's arguments on that matter and Engels'). And he saw Mach's critique of mechanism as being confirmed by the developments of modern physics (i.e. relativity and quantum mechanics). Frank firmly rejected the view that Mach was some sort of quasi-idealist, arguing on the contrary, that Mach was the most effective critic of idealism. This, of course, put him at odds with Lenin. In his view, the dialectical materialists were hampered in this war by their embracing of Engels' three laws of dialectics, which in Frank's view carried the germ of idealism, and which led necessitated, even within the Soviet Union, a perpetual struggle against idealistic deviations. Well, they were hampered in the way they took Engels' formulations as holy writ. And those real scientists who embraced diamat were rendered incapable of rendering their notions sufficiently precise. They understood the general sensibility, but stuck with the authority assumed by the USSR, they traded off of ambiguity while tailing dogmatism. In Frank's opinion a rapproachment between diamat and logical empiricism was possible to the extent that dialectical materialists would be willing to deemphasize the three laws of dialectics and to the extent that they would be willing to avoid describing matter as something that exists objectively, as opposed to instead of speaking in terms of intersubjective propositions. But this is all wrong. Dialectical laws aside, the Marxist position on matter is the correct one,
