I've learned a lot from Ted (and on the A-List some years ago, from James Daly). But Ted seems to want to extract from Marx a total world-view, applicable to everything. I doubt this. James seems to doubt it too. One can see a Hegelian quasi-totality in the "capitalism" discussed in the major documents in Marx's critique (Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, Grundrisse, Capital 1-3, Surplus Value), and this is where the concept of "internal relations" seems applicable and powerful. But there is and should be endless argument whether "Natue" (or The All) is so structured. It seems to me, for example, that understanding of feudal relations is obstructed by bringing in Hegel. The activity of a serf on Lord A's domain has NO necessary relation to the activity of a serf on Lord B's domain.
And when we shift from the abstract capitalism studied in the documents listed above to contemporary capitalism, the gulf is immense. Marx's Critique gives us a powerful historical perspective on those actual relations in actually existing capitalism, and I think that perspective lets us grasp the inherently destructive nature of capitalist relations. One can speak of "laws of motion" of actually existing capitalism only if one accepts the messiness of actuality. Then those laws become crude tendencies. An empirical illustration of this (possibly empirical evidence for it) is the endless disagreements among committed and knowledgeable Marxist "economists." I don't think those disagreements are disabling, but they do illustrate the gap between "laws" (or fundamental theory) and actuality. There are disagreements in all disciplines or sciences; I feel that the extravagant disagreements among "economists" (of all persuasions) at least cast doubt on whether "The Economy" exists as an autonomous field for "scientific" analysis. Marxists make wonderful Historians, and History (Present as History) is far more important than the actual economy, taken as a separate and autonomous object of study. Carrol -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James Daly Sent: Monday, October 21, 2013 10:31 AM To: Progressive Economics Subject: Re: [Pen-l] FAMA (from Carrol) 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
