Date: Tue, 13 Jul 1999 13:08:46 +1000
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: BHA: Diffraction Post one


On the Materialist Diffraction of Dialectic (DPF, pp 86-102)
One of (probably) two posts.

'The best school for the dialectic is emigration. The keenest dialecticians
are refugees. They are refugees because of changes and they study nothing
other than changes=85If their enemies triumph, they calculate how much the
victory has cost, and they have a sharp eye for the contradictions, The
dialectic, may it always flourish'
(Brecht, cited in Bhaskar, 1993: 241)



Outline of Section

i) Introduction A This consists of the first paragraph on page 86
ii) Introduction B. This runs from the paragraph beginning 'The most
significant phases in the development of Marx's thinking=85' on p 86 to
'=85stratification and process in philosophy too' on page 88.
iii) Part 1 From page 88- 92
iv) Part 2 From page 92-93
v)  Part 3 from page 93 to 96
vi)  I would suggest that another Part 4 could be thought of as beginning
on page 96 with 'Marx's epistemological materialism presupposes=85' to
'=85there will always be a conatus for freedom to become.' on page 98
vii) I would suggest a Part 5 beginning on page 98 with 'Having given some
examples of the broadening=85' to help to change it too' on page 100.
viii) That leaves a Part 6 beginning on page 100 with 'It may be apposite
to close this section=85' to 'What it presupposes and what it implies will be
documented in C3' on page 102

To summarise the editorial changes (!) I have split the introduction into
two and then created six rather than three parts. We should note that only
the Introduction A and parts four, five and six deal with the dialectic. Of
these it is only Part Four that is concerned with diffraction, apart that
is from four sentences on page 92. The greater share of this section is
given over to an account of Marx's criticism of Hegel. I will now take each
of these divisions in turn and comment on them.

Introduction A

It is this that really signals what is supposedly the key intention of this
section and also provides us with the clearest account of why he diffracts
the dialectic. So what does he tells us here?  Well there are two elements.
a] the use of Marx's materialist criticism of Hegel permits and demands a
new complex dialectic. b] this new diffracted dialectic is needed to accord
with the 'complexities, angularities and nuances of our pluriversal world'.

Quasi-religious Marxists like myself will immediately detect here the
'dialectics of nature' controversy.  The most celebrated moment in this
controversy was the  Sartre, & Hyppolite versus Garaudy & Vigier debate:
'Is the dialectic solely a law of history or is it also a law of nature?'
The debate took place in Paris on Dec 7 1961 in front of  6,000 young
people. An astonishing number.  Here in Australia you wouldn't get six, not
even with promises of free beer and tickets to the "footie".  [Ah, eat your
hearts out all ye would be philosopher-kings!]

In his discussion of the debate, George Novack outlines three possible
positions on dialectics
1] Dialectics is mystical mumbo-jumbo.  No self-respecting
philosopher/intellectual would even contemplate raising the subject.  This
is the dominant or establishment view at present.
2] Dialectics is valid in some domains but not in others, especially not in
nature.
3] 'Dialectical materialism deals with the entire universe and its logic
holds good for all the constituent sectors of reality'. In his inimitably
crude fashion, Novack describes the third position as the viewpoint held by
the 'creators of scientific socialism and their authentic disciples'
(Novack, 1978:232).

As I understand it Dialectical Critical Realism would reject all three
positions and instead advances a position which holds it that the entire
universe is dialectical but this is not the uniform linear dialectic of
Hegel.  In other words Bhaskar purchases a universal dialectic but at the
expense of the singular triadic [thesis, antithesis, synthesis] formula
much beloved of us old Marxists. 

I would not underestimate the shock this constitutes for the faithful few.
No longer, it seems do we have the kindly light of the dialectic to lead us
on.  No longer can we murmur amidst the seemingly endless triumphs of our
enemies, 'The dialectic will give them according to their deeds, and
according to the wickedness of their endeavours'. Cruelty, thy name is
Bhaskar!

Of course as David-Hillel Ruben and others long before him pointed out, the
universal dialectic was thoroughly idealist. The full implications of
Hegel's idealism are interesting. Nature like everything else would appear
to be dialectical, but its movements did not belong to nature.  Rather they
were the manifestations of the movement of the Idea. Ditto, seemingly, for
the social world (Ruben, 1979: 46-47). So in a sense Hegel did not believe
nature was dialectical.  Consequently when the Dialectical Materialist
inversion of the dialectic was performed, it was a double mistake to look
for the dialectical triad in nature.

The thesis-antithesis-synthesis triad is really a theory of learning. It
was this that led Lucien Goldmann to inform Jean Piaget that he was the
most 'authentic' of contemporary dialecticians.  The latter was, as he
later related, 'terrified' for he had not read a single word of Marx.
(Piaget, 1976: 126-7).
To sum up Introduction A, the materialist critique of Hegel's dialectic
allows a new dialectic, which however is multiply diffracted, i.e. it takes
a great variety of forms.


Introduction B
This part deals with the controversial matter of Marx's relationship to the
Hegelian dialectic.  Bhaskar outlines three phases of the relationship
1. 1843-44. The early attack on the mystified logic of Hegel and the
idealist concept of labour
2. 1840s.  The general attack on philosophy
3. 1857-58. A more positive re-evaluation of Hegel.

Bhaskar sums up the relationship thus: Marx remained critical of Hegel's
dialectic; but he believed he was using a dialectic related to Hegel's.

There follows here an allusion to Marx's famous remarks about the Hegelian
dialectic - the rational kernel, and standing on its head etc.  I am not a
Hegelian scholar, nor, for that matter,  is my grasp of Marx that detailed.
 But, for what it is worth, I think that Hegel will always elude any simple
formula. Ruben puts this nicely when he says ' I do not think that one an
ever capture all of what Hegel was trying to say by translating his
terminology into clearer but non-Hegelian terminology' (Ruben, 1979: 40)
What then was the rational core in the Hegelian dialectic that Marx took
over? Bhaskar says it is 'the notion of the dialectical explanation of
contradictory forces in terms of a structured common ground.' I will return
to this in my discussion of dialectical counterparts, when I will outline
what I think this formula means.  But for the moment it might be helpful to
give Ruben's view of what the 'rational kernel' consists of. He argues this
is 'the necessary development, opposition and change in things' (1979: 55).


The reminder of this introductory section summarises Marx's critique of
Hegel.  The content is reasonably clear, but the presentation is somewhat
cluttered. Much of the criticism of Hegel is familiar but Bhaskar attempts
to give it a Critical Realist spin and perhaps this might be a source of
confusion. In any case Hegel's crimes are
1. The principle of identity.  I take this to mean subject-object identity.
2. Logical mysticism.
3. 'The triple inversions'.  I am not at all clear what these are, but I
love that phrase, sounds like a gay bar on a busy Saturday nite. It turns
up again on page 93.
4.   Realised idealism. This is linked to Hegel's triumphalism, that is the
claim of total success for his system.
5.  Spiritual monism. This is linked to centrism. Monist philosophies
maintain that there is one and one only substance. Centrism is a somewhat
slippery concept, at least for me.  I see it as referring to systems, which
see diverse phenomena as merely expression of one element, say the economy
as in vulgar Marxism.
6.  Preservative dialectical sublation. This was covered in the
introduction.  Briefly the charge here is that Hegel's dialectic preserves
rather than absents. This is possibly linked to endism.  Endist
philosophies posit some kind of goal or terminus, most notably in the 'end
of history' thesis. Communism in Marx's Manifesto is suggested as a
terminus or end for the class struggle.
7.  Hegel's inability to sustain the autonomy of nature.
8.  His cognitivism
9. His failure to uphold the (geo)historicity of social forms.

Bhaskar now restates these accusation in Dialectical Critical Realist
terminology. Here Hegel is guilty of
10. The Speculative Illusion. The reduction of everything to philosophy
11. The Unholy Trinity of Irrealism, that is the
12. Epistemic fallacy - that is the reduction of ontology to epistemology
13. Ontological monovalence - a purely positive account of being.  That is
an account that does not have a notion of absence.
14. The Primal Squeeze -The most difficult of the three concepts.  It is
the denial of a stratified reality. This is produced by the conflict
between those who would deny science and those who would deny philosophy.
As a result we lose a notion of natural necessity and of controlled
scientific exploration of reality.

These terms are all explained in the glossary and they are as well
reasonably familiar to the initiated.  However they can demoralise the
beginner.

I would like to draw particular attention to the last sentence in
Introduction B. It begins 'But it should be said before I commence=85' This
is an interesting disclaimer. Bhaskar here disavows any claim to have
created a "theory of everything".  The dialectic did not stop with Marx nor
will it stop with Bhaskar.

I take these disavowals at the full value.  A theory such as Dialectical
Critical Realism which is built around a stratified ontology and notions
such as epistemic relativism does not aim to be a "theory of everything'.
So postmodernist or neo-anarchist attacks do not apply.

Part 1. This rehearses in a Critical Realist fashion Marx's critique of
Hegel's philosophy of identity

I have read Marx's original critique in the Holy Family and it is very
funny.  I recommend everyone to read it (Marx, Engels, Lenin, 1977: 17-20).

Bhaskar divides Marx's critique into the exoteric and the esoretic. The
exoteric (easily  understood by laypersons) critique is really the
Feuerbachian one.  For Feuerbach humanity created the idea of a god and
then claimed that god had created them. Similarly the philosopher thought.
Then deified "Thought" and claimed that "Thought" had thought through the
philosopher. This can be expressed by the formula W -A -W, (word - act
-word) where 'word' is 'verbally recorded knowledge, knowledge in its
universal form, in the form of the 'language of science, in the form of
formulae, symbols, models of all kinds, etc., etc' (Ilyenkov, 1977: 249).
In reality the situation is A-W-A, where word or knowledge is the product
of human acts which leads to more acts.

It is however the esoteric critique which really interests Bhaskar. It is
also where we find one of the real gems, namely the notion of dialectical
counterparts.  Put simply and crudely Bhaskar says that Hegel and his
objective idealist system are the mirror opposites of the subjective
empiricist system.  The two systems, while apparently opposed to each
other, share a common ground or conception of reality as non-stratified.

Hegel begins his system with 'uncritically received empirical data' (p 88).
He covertly assumes that reality consists of these.  Overtly these are
transformed into the products of the Infinite Mind or the Absolute or the
Idea or something out there. The subjective empiricist claims to receive
unconceptualised raw data.  But covertly she has made the theoretical
assumption that the world consists of atomised facts and their constant
conjunction. In both the case of Hegel and the subjective empiricist there
is the absence of the notion of ontological depth.  This is implicit in
Hegel and explicit with the subjective empiricist. In both cases they are
reading the world. Hegel claims that the Infinite Mind  is writing on him;
while the subjective empiricist is claiming that the world as atomised
facts and constant conjunctions is writing on her.

There are three diagrams in this part.  Those on page 89 are extremely
elegant.    However, for me, the really useful diagram is figure 2.10 on
page 91. Hegel (Speculative Illusion) departs from the status quo, while
the  subjective empiricist (Positivistic illusion) arrives there.

This gives us the core of this critique of Hegel. There is also the
interesting suggestion that Hegel was a logical-positivist before anyone
had even heard of the phrase. This is followed by a note on Marx's
epistemological materialist critique of Hegel.  Immediately after this is a
wonderful spate of Dialectical critical realist "insults" hurled at Hegel
at the bottom of page 91 and 92 - 'atomist, punctualist, extensionalist and
individualist=85expressivist-holist, blockist, intensionalist and
collectivist'. Wow! Go Roy go!

Let us turn to  page 92  and the paragraph beginning 'Marx's analysis has
three other important implications'. The implications are 1. Hegel is at
heart a conservative. 2. Beneath his dialectical analysis there is the
empiricist assumption about the nature of reality. 3. If we reject the
notion of subject object identity then we can have a diffracted dialectic.
We can have epistemological dialectics (subject) and ontological dialectics
(object)  there can even be intermingled and embedded ones. Speaking of
which - Embedded dialectics.  For the bold few on this list who are
interested in Cultural Studies, I would suggest that it would be fruitful
to think of the intertextual as a subset of the embedded dialectic.

I would like to spend the remainder of this post on saying briefly why I
believe the notion of dialectical counter part is such a jewel.  It gives
me nothing less than a critique of an entire tradition in Cultural Studies.
For example  Babha's post colonial mimic, Bakhtin's Carnival Theory, and
Queer Theory's bi/tran/a etc sexual are all vulnerable to this critique.
While appearing to oppose the status quo they in effect share a common ground

Take for example the theory of the carnival. Bakhtin's claim for this was
that it created an unofficial world marked by freedom, an alternate
universe and the people's truth. But the carnival always knew it had to
end.  In no sense was it a challenge to the official world that might have
ended with the transcendence of the latter. Because at the heart of the
matter, Carnival and the Status Quo both rested on the ground of TINA -
There Is No Alternative to Das Bestehende - the existing state of affairs.
So at one stroke we have an elegant cut through the dominant moment in
Cultural studies theorising.  We have a way of theoretical grounding our
feeling that neo-Bakhtinians, like John Fiske, were talking rubbish when
they hailed the progressive moment in television shows like The Price is
Right and Rock and Roll Wrestling (Fiske, 1987).

Part Two (pp 92-3)

This part deals specifically with Marx.  It asks the question: To what
extent did Marx in his critique of Hegel move to a radically
anti-philosophical position?  Did he perpetrate the Positivistic illusion?
Hegel was guilty of the opposite - the speculative illusion where
philosophy was everything and there was little or no role for science.
Bhaskar's answer would appear to be a tentative 'yes', especially for the
period in which Marx produced the German Ideology.
 Next Bhaskar turns to the specifics of Marx's criticism of Hegel.  The
first of these is clear.  Hegel thought only in terms of abstract mental
labour.  This enabled him to hold onto his W -A -W formulation.  However if
he had worked more on the world he would presumably come to the correct
formula A - W- A.
There is a problem for  me with this part of the key sentence I think there
is a typo.  It goes 

'=85and is in turn based on the second form of philosophical materialism to
which Marx is, except for a few early passages, committed, namely
ontological materialism, asserting the unilateral *independence of social
upon biological (and more generally physical) being, and the emergence of
the latter from the former.

Surely this should read *dependence*? And the 'latter' is physical being?
And the 'former' is biological being?

The next sentence, which concludes this part, gives us a critique of Marx.
It is very libertarian socialist and very 60s. I am prepared to go along
publicly with most of it.  However deep within my Leninist closet, I mutter
secretly to myself about the primacy of class.
The criticism of Marx is triggered of by the statement that Hegel uses
constellationality in a theoretically triumphalist way. I take this to mean
that Hegel closes off his system with the return to the Absolute, the Idea
or something.  He then claims to have solved everything.

Marx's faults are that

a. He places class as primary.
b. He perpetrates a linear presentation. This is the charge that one stage
is supposed to flow from the other.
c. He tended to think as communism as the 'end of history'.
d. His celebration of the achievements of technology (in the Manifesto?),
tended to be functionalist, that is, not to see the downside of
technological innovation.
e. He indulges in notions of necessity of the conquest of nature. This
stems in part from an uncritical reception or celebration of Modernism.
Most notable in the Manifesto and much less clear in the last writings.
f. This is a hard one!!! I take it to mean that in some way Darwinism
influenced Marx in the direction of Social Darwinism.  I met many Social
Darwinists in China in 1990, but theirs was a very degenerated Marxism indeed.
g. This last charge of 'programmatic practical-expressivism' is for me
really the accusation that Marx did not take into account the full range of
oppressions in society.





References

Bakhtin, M., Laughter and Freedom in Solomon, M. (ed) Marxism and Art,
Detroit: Wayne State University, 1979: 295-300
Bhaskar, R., Dialectic: The Pulse of Freedom, London: Verso, 1993
Fiske, J., Television Culture, New York: Routledge, 1987
Ilyenkov, E.V. Dialectical Logic: Essays on Its History and Theory, Moscow:
Progress Publishers, 1977
Marx, Engels, Lenin, On dialectical Materialism, Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1977
Novack, G., Polemics in Marxist Philosophy: Essays on: Sartre  Plekhanov
Lukacs Engels Kolakowski Trotsky Timpanaro  Colletti  New York: Monad
Press, 1978

Piaget, J., A brief tribute to Goldmann, in Goldmann, L., Cultural
Creation, St. Louis: Telos Press, 1979: 125-7

Ruben, D-H, Marxism and Dialectics, in Mepham, J., & Ruben D-H. (eds)
Issues in Marxist Philosophy, London: The Harvester Press, 1979: 37-87




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