Ted Winslow - To Progressive Economics
Oct 20 at 11:09 PM
James Daly wrote:
> It has to be remembered that Marx's concept of nature was Darwinian, not
> Newtonian. He was talking not about "the laws of nature", but of the nature
> of things, including economic systems.
Marx's idea of "a process of natural history" isn't Darwinian; it's Hegelian.
This conceives "nature" in a way that has it's full development end in the
actualization of "self-conscious reason," i.e. in the actualization of a fully
developed human being as a "species-being." The "laws" operative in the process
are those required to realize this end.
************
I don't like the hoary old doctrine of the early Marx philosopher of
alienation and the later mechanistic Marx – I prefer that of the mechanistic-
leaning Marx of the manifesto and the early writings on India, and the later
Marx's interest in "archaic" agrarian communism. But whereas in his early
writings Hegelian methods helped him to understand the class realities of his
day, would he have In 1867 confused a process of nature with a Hegelian
argument from reason? Doesn't nature include dinosaurs as well as humans? --
JD
On Sunday, 20 October 2013, 23:09, Ted Winslow <[email protected]> wrote:
James Daly wrote:
>
>> It has to be remembered that Marx's concept of nature was Darwinian, not
>> Newtonian. He was talking not about "the laws of nature", but of the nature
>> of things, including economic systems.
>
>Marx's idea of "a process of natural history" isn't Darwinian; it's Hegelian.
>This conceives "nature" in a way that has it's full development end in the
>actualization of "self-conscious reason," i.e. in the actualization of a a
>fully developed human being as a "species-being." The "laws" operative in the
>process are those required to realize this end.
>
>Conceived in this way, "the moving and generating principle" of the process is
>"the dialectic of negativity." This "does not merely apprehend any phase as a
>limit and opposite, but produces out of this negative a positive content and
>result." In human history this negative takes the form of "estrangement"
>within the labour process.
>
>"The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and of its final
>outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle,
>is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process,
>conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as
>transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour
>and comprehends objective man – true, because real man – as the outcome of
>man’s own labour. The real, active orientation of man to himself as a
>species-being, or his manifestation as a real species-being (i.e., as a human
>being), is only possible if he really brings out all his species-powers –
>something which in turn is only possible through the cooperative action of all
>of mankind, only as the result of history – and treats these powers as
>objects: and this, to begin with, is again only possible in the form of
>estrangement."
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm>
>
>The working of the dialectic of negativity is the working of "reason."
>Consequently, "The business of science is simply to bring the specific work of
>the reason, which is in the thing, to consciousness."
><http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/printrod.htm>
>
>Capital as a critique of political economy is a work of "science" in this
>sense. It aims to accomplish what Marx, in a September 1843 letter to Arnold
>Ruge, claimed a "critic," given this idea of human history as a "natural
>process," could accomplish.
>
>"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form. The critic
>can therefore start out from any form of theoretical and practical
>consciousness and from the forms peculiar to existing reality develop the true
>reality as its obligation and its final goal."
><http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm>
>
>Ted
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>pen-l mailing list
>[email protected]
>https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
>
>
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
