CeJ jannuzi -- RD:
>>You certainly cannot understand Marx without understanding the Young Hegelian milieu. The Second International Marxists never understood it and Engels' pamphlet on Feuerbach did not provide sufficient information and perspective.>> Agreed, but one 'popular' view that we often are asked to inherit sees a simple line of development of nascent possibilities finding Hegel's philosophy, and then falling under the influence of Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer (the latter being Marx's mentor). Marx's doctoral thesis, although it appears sophomoric compared to most of the texts we consider as source material , ^^^ CB: I think Marx was a senior when he wrote it ( smile) ^^^^^ displays Marx as part idealist philosopher, but grounded in concerns that seem to predict some of his future directions (e.g., an eye for details and specifics rather than generalizations) . But more importantly than that, later Marx goes 'back to Hegel', and even says he does, and many see this as the key to understanding the genesis of the creation or discovery of historical materialism and the later form of materialism, which Engels's called dialectical materialism. This comes to light in the Theses on Feuerbach, written in 1845 but published by Engels in 1888. ^^^^^^^ CB: Here's Marx on his relationship to Hegel Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method? Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of “Das Kapital,” it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Epigonoi [Epigones – Büchner, Dühring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire. Karl Marx London January 24, 1873 http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htm >>As for Lenin's MAEC, these issues have been argued endlessly. MAEC serves a limited function; it combats an overall positivist philosophy based on a misuse of the natural sciences, ubiquitous in Lenin's time, but it doesn't address more sophisticated issues about the relation of subject and object (in relation to social formations). However, that doesn't mean Lenin was wrong about his arguments for philosophical materialism in the most general sense. Natural science materialism, like natural science itself, gives us the floor of a world view, but not the ceiling.>> But a post-mo would say, one can aver one is a materialist and yet when doing philosophy display something else. Anglo-analytic types jump on the very same tendencies for meaning in texts to drift beyond stated intentions. >>One thing that would be useful, given how much this stuff has been rehashed, would be a more complete picture of the ideas circulating towards the end of the 19th century and among whom. The rebellion against psychologism, the lineage of Frege and Husserl, the positivism and vulgar evooutionism, social physics and social darwinism, revolutions in mathematics and logic, the influence of Nietzsche, the distillation of an intellectual entity known as Marxism, the birth of modern sociology and social theory (Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, etc.), traditions passed through Dilthey, neo-Kantianism, etc. etc. There was a lot going on, but there is also a fragmentation of knowledge to consider, a fragmentation that has yet to be overcome. Even "Marxism" remains fragmentation; I doubt there is a single person around with an intimate familiarity with all the schools of thought that marxism has generated or fused with.<< What interests me is the way Marxism survives the turn to post-structuralism and the wider postmodernism, even though the results are dismaying to many Marxists. Finally, about the fragmentation of knowledge issue. The modernists pointed this out (that poetic 'heap of broken images' in Yeats). So simplistically speaking, I could say much of what made modernism a condition was the belief that through sophistication and refined methods, they could pull it all together. And in 1945, some got the realization that the post-modern already existed and the modernists hadn't succeeded. (Lyotard specifically picks out the year 1945, but he also points out that for modernism to exist, there already had to be a 'post-modern'). I pass over the issue with the thought that as knowledge has expanded and fragmented into micro-disciplines, many of which can't even communicate with closely related specialties, I also get the feeling that most of this expansion and branching of knowledge--outside of a small percentage of the happy accidents of science and technology--isn't really very useful for everyday life. In my own profession (foreign language teaching, applied linguistics), I wish to shift back to phenomenological and existential concerns because deep down I feel there is very little to be done in terms of collective action counter the capitalist-commercial, elite institutional, and scientistic domination of the field I'm forced to work in. End of confession. CJ ^^^^^^^ CB: Always good to learn more about comrades. Applied linguistics ! So lets go back and talk about structuralism's relatinship to post-mods _______________________________________________ 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
