File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1999/bhaskar.9902, message 58


Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 01:49:46 -0500
From: Howie Chodos <howie-AT-magi.com>
Subject: Re: BHA: replying to Howie & Cultural Studies & DPF


Some initial reactions to Mervyn's and Gary's responses to my previous post.

1. Does _Critical Realism: Essential Readings_ exist in a paperback
edition? Barnes & Noble only lists it in hardback at US$115.

2. Mervyn cites Margaret Archer as an example of someone whose work employs
dialectics. While I think there is much of merit in her "Morphogenetic
Realism" (in particular her account of emergence), I also think it is
deeply flawed, and in a way that I would be inclined to characterise as
undialectical. In fact, I find it extremely curious that RB seemed to agree
with Archer's criticism of the basic argument for the TMSA. 

At the inaugural Centre for Critical Realism conference at Warwick, when RB
introduced Archer he presented her as being one of the few intellectuals
who had been able to convince him that he was wrong about something. He
then seemed to endorse Archer's position that to embrace the idea of a
duality of structure was to conciliate with the 'central conflationism' of
Anthony Giddens's Structuration Theory, and that he had been wrong to have
argued that the TMSA had many affinities with Giddens's approach.

The problem, as I see it, is that to reject the duality of structures is to
lose the possibility of seeing structures as being both ontologically
distinct from individuals, yet also existentially intertwined with them.
And that formulation, to my mind, captures the essence of the dialectic. It
highlights the idea that there are two poles that are mutually irreducible,
yet each is indispensable to the other; that their interaction is causally
efficacious, generating a continuum, whose extreme positions they
represent; that all events that are somehow affected by this dialectic will
contain traces of each pole, but neither pole can ever be actualised in a
pure form. This establishes a level of causality that I would agree can
only be termed dialectical. 

I use the word 'level' advisedly here. The best way I have found to think
about dialectic is to see it as itself dialectically linked to a more
concrete level of dialectical processes. Dialectic can be analytically
distinguished, but does not anywhere dictate the development of any
particular dialectical process. Thus, we could posit a dialectic linking
working class and capitalist class, but saying this does not permit the
prediction of any particular outcome. It does not indicate, for example,
how the evolution of capitalism will occur, nor whether there will ever be
an end to the ability of the capitalist system to reproduce itself. 

It does set parameters, however. What this means is that, using our example
of the contradiction between capital and labour, outside certain conditions
there does not exist a dynamic generated by this contradiction. (I would
argue that the core condition is the commodification of human labour power,
but that is another matter.) This means that socialists who wish to see the
elimination of capitalism need to think about how to change the very
essence of this dynamic. The question we must confront is how to alter
social relations so that the contradiction between capital and labour can
no longer be 'spontaneously' reproduced. It seems to me that this is where
a 'dialectical' approach is required.

3. With regard to the dialectic in general, I favour an approach that seeks
to simplify, as well as to explain complexity. If we are serious about
transforming the world, we will, someday, have to be able to express our
core philosophical ideas in ways that lots of people will find useful and
convincing. This does not mean that we should immediately seek to do this,
or abandon all discussion that is not entirely free from specialised
jargon. It simply recognises that there are two jobs to be done. I would
argue that, right now, the principal task (to borrow a way of talking from
Mao -- on whom, more below) is, indeed, theoretical. At many levels we lack
the conceptual tools to be able to paint a clear picture of what social
transformation means to us. Until we have them, it will remain exceedingly
hard to popularise a vision of the future worth fighting for.

Which brings me to the merit of Mao's dialectic. Now, if you want an
unpopular version of the dialectic in the western academy, choose Mao's --
in this respect Mao makes Bhaskar look like a welcome guest at the
philosopher’s banquet. Having said this, however, I do not wish to argue
that the way in which Mao articulated and utilised the dialectic is
necessarily the way to go. That would be a stronger position than I am
comfortable with. But I do think that his characterisation of the central
dynamic of dialectics as being the unity of opposites has a lot going for
it. (See the opening paragraphs of his _On Contradiction_.)

The model of this kind of dialectic for me is, to repeat, the TMSA. If
Bhaskar's dialectic unfolded from these premisses, I would be on board in a
flash. But I worry it does not. As Mervyn and Alan argued, but from an
opposite viewpoint, the style in which he writes *is* connected to the
conception that Bhaskar has of the dialectic. I find that it has become
such a grandiose and all-embracing edifice that it is, to my mind, almost
inconceivable that it could ever provide inspiration to a sufficiently
large cohort of the population to be able to become a real guide to human
emancipation.

As I have been trying to argue this does not mean that all talk of
dialectic is bad, or that there are not many insights that are to be had by
working with RB's version. But it does express severe and serious
reservations about the nature of the emancipatory project that is conveyed
by the overall form of Bhaskar's dialectic. I do not for a minute want to
question Bhaskar's personal commitment to advancing the cause of human
emancipation, nor do I wish to belittle the important theoretical and
philosophical contributions he has already made to that cause. I feel that
I personally owe him a large debt of gratitude for helping to guide my own
intellectual evolution (although I'm sure that there are no doubt some who
would wonder whether I properly digested the lesson). But I do think that,
even accepting this, one can still hold that there is something in the way
the dialecticisation of CR has proceeded that clashes seriously with the
goals and the spirit that CR had so forcefully articulated. 

This, to me, is what is at the heart of the dispute. This is also why I
would advocate an informed pluralism with regard to the CR/DCR debate. If
people holding either position do not think they have the right to be able
to decide the issue, while always being ready to put their case, we should
be able to generate a congenial context for us all to learn from one another.

Howie Chodos




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