Ralph,
I see that Steve didn't respond directly to your question concerning these
quotes from Ilyenkov. Maybe I can help.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ralph Dumain" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 5:42
Subject: Spam: 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."
I addressed most of this question in my message to CB (04/06):
"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".
Note that objective reality is here not a property of pristine nature or
nature external to human intervention. Reality for Marx, Engels and Lenin a
product of the activities of man in, on and with nature.
All that needs be added here is the fairly obvious observation that the
child knocking about the gewgaw and the gewgaw hanging over his crib are
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."
All this passage means is that logic (the logical categories of thought as
developed by Hegel and adopted and modified by Marx and Engels) cannot be
explained as the cogitive activity of the individual writ large. Men learn
to be logical from their elders and coworkers and only thinks in those
logical categories he's succeeded in learning from others ( the results of
Vygotsky's research on language learning appear to confirm this). The
individual does not invent logical method himself, it was invented long
before he was born and naturally he was unable to participate in its
formation. For this reason psychology makes no significant contribution to
the development of human culture.
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."
This is the most important of the three citations. It makes the point that
in making one object of nature act upon another object of nature in the
process of producing some useful object men must design their activities to
take into account the properties and laws that govern the results of their
actions on the materials and on the interaction between the materials
enforced by human action. Thus if you use a ten kilo sledge to break a
basalt boulder your focus of strength to lift it, your lifting the hammer
head to just the right height, your letting it swing at the precise point of
weakness in the boulder relying on the springiness of the sledge handle and
the glassy surface of the rock and of course the exact structure of the rock
(laid down when the rock was still molten and the tiny bubbles of air
trapped in the rock collected in layers within the body of the boulder) to
cause the rock to split in one blow.
All these practical features (call them principles of laws) of basalt rock
splitting have very little to do with the thought of men, even the focusing
on ones muscles. On the other hand without knowing them we might pound for
days on that boulder and end by producing a bit of basalt dust, some bad
blisters, and worse tempers. The logic of the relations of these practical
activities is implicit in the properties of the work, the physical body, the
tools and the materia and in the purpose of the work. It is, of course, the
purpose of the work that compels us to encounter the particular laws of
basalt boulder breaking. If we had decided instead to leave it in place as
a handy backrest for lunch break none of these laws would be evoked. Thus
the properties and laws of the existence of all the components of boulder
breaking are quite independent of the thoughts of the boulder breakers, and
the actual decision to break it is human and the determination of human
needs that motivated the work is quite independent in its origins from the
rock but both rock and needs are practically connected to oneanother in the
execution of the work. Can we get any more dialectical than that?
Hope that helps.
Regards,
Oudeyis
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