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"
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 arte
