Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 10:01:46 -0600 (MDT)
Subject: BHA: test



Colin, if our little common-sensical chat about the weather
(rain) does not convince you of the power and necessity of
dialectics then I agree with you; it would not convince me
either.  I think it would be more fruitful to look at examples
where Marx uses dialectics in *Capital*.  I have some such
examples in mind which I will send to the list as my time
permits, and as they fit into our discussion of DPF.


But going back to the text, here is another study question:

Question:

Explain Hegel's three illicit inversions.  Can they be
remedied by inverting them again?

The rest of this message is my answer:

This refers to pp. 93/4 in DPF.  Although Marx did not
clearly differentiate ontology, epistemology, and sociology,
he criticizes Hegel for a triple inversion of `subject' and
`predicate' along these three lines.  Marx's remedy is
another inversion, but RB seems to think that this is a too
narrow approach, and that Marx also goes beyond a mere
re-inversion.

Here is an explanation of the three inversions:

Ontology: Hegel is an absolute idealist.  Now here is
an attempt to say what this means, plese corrrect me if I am
off: Hegel thinks that the empirical world is the
incarnation of universals, of "ideas".  These universals are
primary, and they condense themselves into empirics in the
process of their self-movement, so that they can expand all
their implications and get to know themselves better etc.
Marx, by contrast, says that "universals are properties of
particular things" (DPF 93).

Here I would like to make another remark about a translation
error in Marx: Marx differentiates between "Dasein" and
"Existenz", and he relates them in an opposite way than
Hegel did, but the translators usually translate both terms
with "existence", thus blurring this distinction and this
inversion.  Dasein is determinate being, and existenz,
according to Hegel, is mediated being.  For Hegel, Dasein is
primary, and existence secondary, existence only arises
because Dasein needs a place to sit down.  Marx uses some
formulations in Capital and especially in *Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy* in which he exactly
reverses this: for Marx, existence is primary, and Dasein
usually needs work.  Just 2 examples from *Contribution*:

 Dieses Dasein der Ware als Gebrauchswert
 und ihre natuerliche handgreifliche Existenz fallen zusammen.
 (MEW 13, p. 15)

 The determinate being of the commodity as a use value
 coincides with its physical palpable existence.

This is the big counterexample: this is a Dasein which does
not need work but which is given immediately.  But this is
no longer so with exchange value, i.e., the Dasein of the
commodity as a product of social labor: the Dasein of this
labor as social labor is mediated through the exchange
process.  There is a place in MEW 13, p. 20 about this:

 Nur dadurch,
 dass die Arbeitszeit des Spinners
 und die Arbeitszeit des Webers als allgemeine Arbeitszeit,
 ihre Produkte daher als allgemeine Aequivalente sich darstellen,
 wird hier die Arbeit des Webers fuer den Spinner
 und die des Spinners fuer den Weber,
 die Arbeit des einen fuer die Arbeit des andern,
 d.h. das gesellschaftliche Dasein ihrer Arbeiten fuer beide.

 Don't have time to translate this now.



Here is a third place, in the development of money:

 Das Dasein einer besonderen Ware als allgemeines Aequivalent
 wird aus blosser Abstraktion
 *gesellschaftliches* Resultat des Austauschprozesses selbst
 (MEW 13, p. 32 or 33)

 The determiante being of a particular commodity as general
 equivalent is no longer a mere abstraction but
 becomes the *social* result of the exchange process itself.

This is the end of my translation remark, now
lets go from ontology to epistemology:


Epistemology: instead of Hegel's speculative rationalist
epistemology Marx considers knowledge as "irreducibly
empirical".  I think this means it cannot be reduced to
empirical knowledge, but it emerges on the basis of
empirical knowledge.  On the next page, RB says that Hegel's
speculative illusion is the reduction of science to
philosophy.  Does he mean that Marx's response is to reduce
philosophy to science?  Certainly many modern Marxists make
this error.  This is what RB calls the ontic fallacy (I
think).  It is wrong to consider knowledge "irreducibly
empirical", because this overlooks that transcendental
arguments based on the possibility of science can generate
knowledge too, i.e., that mankind derives knowledge from its
ability to act and to know.


Sociology:  Hegel has a substantive idealist sociology,
i.e., let me take a wild stab here, for Hegel the state
is necessary because the human individual is imperfect
and in the state it can perfect itself.  Marx reverses this
and bases the state on the mode of production.  Does
RB find this too narrow too?


Hans E.





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