Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 00:09:08 +0000 From: MA&NG Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Subject: M-I: [Fwd: Dialectics: Sohn Rethel Pt 3] This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Sohn-Rethel pt 3 -- Regards, Mark Jones majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~majones/index.htm Message-ID: <32E8E74B.14B9-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 16:46:03 +0000 From: MA&NG Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Reply-To: majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; I) To: marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Subject: Dialectics: Sohn Rethel Pt 3 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Final part of Sohn-Rethel (no rush to judgments please, and roar quietly if you must) -- Regards, Mark Jones majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~majones/index.htm Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual labour, Part 3 of 3 Three: T h e C o m m o d i t y A b s t r ac t i on The form of commodity is abstract and abstractness governs its whole orbit. To begin with, exchange-value is itself abstract value in contrast to the use-value of commodities. The exchange- value is subject only to quantitative differentiation, aMessage-ID: <32E94F24.D4-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 00:09:08 +0000 From: MA&NG Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Reply-To: majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; I) To: marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Subject: [Fwd: Dialectics: Sohn Rethel Pt 3] This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Sohn-Rethel pt 3 -- Regards, Mark Jones majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~majones/index.htm Message-ID: <32E8E74B.14B9-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 16:46:03 +0000 From: MA&NG Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Reply-To: majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; I) To: marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Subject: Dialectics: Sohn Rethel Pt 3 This is a multi-part message in MIME format. Final part of Sohn-Rethel (no rush to judgments please, and roar quietly if you must) -- Regards, Mark Jones majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~majones/index.htm Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual and Manual labour, Part 3 of 3 Three: T h e C o m m o d i t y A b s t r ac t i on The form of commodity is abstract and abstractness governs its whole orbit. To begin with, exchange-value is itself abstract value in contrast to the use-value of commodities. The exchange- value is subject only to quantitative differentiation, aealed in his analysis must be viewed as a real abstraction resulting from spatio-temporal activity. Understood in this way, Marx)s discovery stands in irreconcilable contradiction to the entire tradition of theoretical philosophy and this contradiction must be brought into the open by critical confrontation of the two conflicting standpoints. But such a confrontation does not form part of` the Marxian analysis. I agree with Louis Althusser that in the theoretical foundations of Capital more fundamental issues are at stake than those showing in the purely economic argument. Althusser believes that Capital is the answer to a question implied but not formulated by Marx. Althusser defeats the purpose of his search for this question by insisting 'que la production de la connaissance ... constitue un processus qui se passe tout entier dans la pensee'. He understands Marx on the commodity abstrac- tion metaphorically, whereas it should be taken literally and its epistemological implications pursued so as to grasp how Marx's method turns Hegel's dialectic 'right side up'. The unproclaimed theme of Capital and of the commodity analysis is in fact the real abstraction uncovered there. Its scope reaches further than economics - indeed it concerns the heritage of philosophy far more directly than it concerns political economy. Some people go further and accuse Marx of having ignored the epistemological implications of his own mode of thinking. Here I agree that, if one takes up these implications and pursues them consistently, epistemology itself undergoes a radical transfor- mation and indeed merges into a theory of society. However I believe that the fallacies of the epistemological and idealistic tradition are more effectively eliminated if one does not talk of 'the theory of knowledge' but the division of mental and manual labour instead. For then the practical significance of the whole enquiry becomes apparent. If the contradiction between the real abstraction in Marx and the thought abstraction in the theory of knowledge is not brought to any critical confrontation, one must acquiesce with the total lack of connection between the scientific form of thought and the historical social process. Mental and manual labour must remain divided. This means, however, that one must also acquiesce with the persistence of social class division, even if this assumes the form of socialist bureaucratic rule. Marx's omission of the theory of knowledge results in the lack of a theory of mental and manual labour; it is, in other words, the theoretical omission of a precondition of a classless society which was seen by Marx himself to be fundamental. The political implication heightens its theoretical importance. For not only must the conception of history be broadened to include science, but also its method must be a consistently critical one. For Marx arrives at the correct understanding of things only by critically tracing the causes that give rise to the false consciousness operating in class society. Thus, to the conditions of a classless society we must add, in agreement with Marx, the unity of mental and manual labour, or as he puts it, the disappearance of their division. And the present study maintains that an adequate insight can only be gained into the conditions of a classless society by investigating the origin of the division of head and hand. This involves a critique of philosophical epistemology which is the false consciousness arising from this division. The Marxian concept of critique owes its parentage to Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. We now apply in full circle the principle of critique in this sense to the Kantian epistemology. This is the classic manifestation of the bourgeois fetishism embodied in the mental labour of science. We must trace the division of mental an manual labour back to its earliest occurrence in history. Th origin we date from the beginnings of Greek philosophy because its antecedents in Egypt and Mesopotamia are prescientific. Our task, now, amounts to the critical demonstration of th commodity abstraction. 'This is only a reformulation of what was previously referred to as 'critical confrontation'. We have to prove that the exchange abstraction is, first, a real historical occurrence in time and space, and, second, that it is a abstraction in the strict sense acknowledged in epistemology. This enquiry must be preceded by a description of the phenom- enon under investigation. Four: T h e P h e n o m e n o n o f t h e E x c h a n g e A b s t r a c t i o n The Marxist concept of commodity abstraction refers to the labour which is embodied in the commodities and which: determines the magnitude of their value. The value-creating labour is termed 'abstract human labour' to differentiate it from concrete labour which creates use-values. Our main concern is to clarify this 'commodity abstraction" and to trace its origin to its roots. It must be stated from the outset that our analysis of exchange and value differs in certain respects from that of Marx in the opening of volume I of Capital without, for that matter, contradicting his analysis. Marx was concerned with the 'critique of political economy', while our subject is the theory of scientific knowledge and its historical-materialist critique. However. Marx himself has defined the aspect of exchange as it concerns our purpose: "...However long a series of periodical reproductions and preced- ing accumulations the capital functioning today may have passed through, it always preserves its original virginity. So long as the laws of exchange are observed in every single act of exchange taken in isolation - the mode of appropriation [of. the surplus - S.-R.] can be completely revolutionised without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production. The same rights remain in force both at the outset, when the product belongs to its producer, who, exchanging equivalent for equivalent, can enrich himself only by his own labour, and in the period of capitalism, when social wealth becomes to an ever-increasing degree the property of those who are in a position to appropriate the unpaid labour of others over and over again..." Hence the formal structure of commodity exchange, in every single act, remains the same throughout the various stages of commodity production. I am concerned exclusively with this formal structure, which takes no account of the relationship of value to labour. Indeed where labour is taken into consideration we are in the field of economics. Our interest is confined to the abstraction contained in exchange which we shall find de- termines the conceptual mode of thinking peculiar to societies based on commodity production. In order to pursue our particular purpose of tracing to its origin the abstraction permeating commodity exchange we slightly modify the starting base of the analysis. Marx begins by distinguishing use-value and exchange-value as the major con- trasting aspects of every commodity. We trace these aspects to the different human activities to which they correspond, the actions of use and the action of exchange. The relationship between these two contrasting kinds of activity, use and exchange, is the basis of the contrast and relationship between use-value and exchange- value. The explanation of the abstraction of exchange is contained in this relationship. The point is that use and exchange are not only different and contrasting by description, but are mutually exclusive in time. They must take place separately at different times. This is because exchange serves only a change of ownership, a change that is, in terms of a purely social status of the commodities a! owned property. In order to make this change possible on a basis of negotiated agreement the physical condition of the com- modities, their material status, must remain unchanged, or at any fate must he assumed to remain unchanged. Commodity exchange cannot take place as a recognised social institution -unless this separation of exchange from use is stringently observed. This is a truth which need only be uttered to be convincing, and I regard it as a firm basis on which to build far- reaching conclusions. First, therefore, let us be clear as to the specific nature of this particular restriction of` use. For there are, of course, countless situations apart from exchange where the use of things is stopped, hindered, interrupted or otherwise disputed. None of these have the same significance as exchange. Things may be stored for later use, others put on one side for the children, wine may be kept in the cellar to mature, injured bodies be ordered a rest, and so on. These are stoppages or delays of use decided upon by the users themselves and done in the service of their use. Whether they happen in a private household or on the wider basis of production carried on in common with other people, cases of this kind are nor on a level comparable with exchange, because use here is not forbidden by social command or necessity. But social interference occurs wherever there is exploitation without for that reason alone being necessarily similar to exchange. Long before there was commodity production exploitation assumed one of the many forms of what Marx has termed 'direct lordship and bondage'. This is exploitation based on unilateral appropriation as opposed to the reciprocity of exchange. In ancient Bronze Age Egypt, for instance, priests and scribes and other servants of the Pharaoh were engaged co collect surplus produce from the Nilotic peasants and put it into storage. Once the produce was collected neither the peasant producers nor the collectors had access to these goods for their own use, for the power and authority for the collection emanated from the Pharaoh. There was a transference of property, but a public, not a private, one, and there was the same immutability of the material status of the products held in store for disposal by the ruling authorities which applies in the case of commodities in exchange. There were significant formal similarities between Bronze Age Egypt or Babylonia and Iron Age Greece, and we shall find in the second part of this study that the proto-science which emerged in the ancient oriental civilisations can be accounted for on these grounds. But the great difference is that the social power imposing this control over the use of things was in the nature of the personal authority of the Pharaoh obeyed by every member of the ruling set-up. In an exchange society based on commodity production, however, the social power has lost this personal character and in its place is an anonymous necessity which forces itself upon every individual commodity owner. The whole of the hierarchical superstructure of the Egyptian society has disap- peared, and the control over the use and disposal of things is now exercised anarchically by the mechanism of the market in accordance with the laws of private property, which are in fact the laws of the separation of exchange and use. Thus the salient feature of the act of exchange is that its separation from use has assumed the compelling necessity of an objective social law. Wherever commodity exchange takes place, it does so in effective 'abstraction' from use. This is an abstraction not in mind, but in fact. It is a state of affairs prevailing at a definite place and lasting a definite time. It is the state of affairs which reigns on the market. There, in the market-place and in shop windows, things stand still. They are under the spell of one activity only; to change owners. They stand there waiting to be sold. While they are there for exchange they are there not for use. A commodity marked out at a definite price, for instance, is looked upon as being frozen to absolute immutability throughout the time during which its price remains unaltered. And the spell does not only bind the doings of` man. Even Nature herself is supposed to abstain from any ravages in the body of` this commodity and to hold her breath, as it were, for the sake of this social business of man. Evidently, even the aspect of non-human nature is affected by the banishment of use from the sphere of exchange. The abstraction from use in no way implies, however, that the use-value of the commodities is of no concern in the marker. Quite the contrary. While exchange banishes use from the actions of marketing people, it does not banish it from their minds. However, it must remain confined to their minds, occupying them in their imagination and thoughts only. This is not to say that their thoughts need lack reality. Customers have the right to ascertain the use-value of the commodities on offer. They may examine them at close quarters, touch them, try them out, or try them on, ask to have them demonstrated if the case arises. And the demonstration should be identically like the use for which the commodity is (or is not) acquired. On standards empiricism no difference should prevail between the use on show and the use in practice. This, however, is the difference that matters on the business standards which rule in the market. 0f a commodity ;n the market the empirical data come under reservations like those argued in subjective idealism; material reality accrues to them when the object is out of the market and passes, by virtue of the money paid, into the private sphere of the acquiring customer. It is certain that the customers think of commodities as objects of use, or nobody would bother to exchange them (and confidence tricksters would be out of business) . The banishment of use during exchange is entirely independent of what the specific use may be and can be kept ;II the private minds of the exchanging agents (buyers and sellers of sodium chlorate might have gardening in mind or bomb-making). Thus, in speaking of the abstractness of exchange we must be careful not to apply the term to the consciousness of the exchanging agents. They are supposed to be occupied with the use of the commodities they see, but occupied in their imagin- ation only. It is the action of exchange, and the action alone that is abstract. The consciousness and the action of the people part company in exchange and go different ways. We have to trace their ways separately, and also their interconnection. As commodity production develops and becomes the typical form of production, man's imagination grows more and more separate from his actions and becomes increasingly individualised, eventually assuming the dimensions of a private consciousness. This is a phenomenon deriving its origin, not from the private sphere of use, but precisely from the public one of the market. The individualised consciousness also is beset by ab- stractness, but this is not the abstractness of the act of exchange at its source. For the abstractness of that action cannot be noted when it happens, since it only happens because the consciousness of its agents is taken up with their business and with the empirical appearance of things which pertains to their use. One could say that the abstractness of their action is beyond realisation by the actors because their very consciousness stands in the way. Were the abstractness to catch their minds their action would cease to be exchange and the abstraction would not arise. Nevertheless the abstractness of exchange *does* enter their minds, but only after the event, when they are faced with the completed result of the circulation of the commodities. The chief result is money in which the abstractness assumes a separate embodiment. Then, however, 'the movement through which the process has been mediated vanishes in its own result, leaving no trace behind'. This will occupy us more fully later on. Here we want to return once more to the separation of exchange from use and to its basic nature. When looking at use and exchange as kinds of human practice it becomes plain to see in what manner they exclude each other. Either can take place only while the other does not. The practice of 'use' covers a well-nigh unlimited field of human activities; in fact it embraces all the material processes by which we live as bodily beings on the bosom of mother earth, so to speak, comprising the entirety of what Marx terms 'man's interchange with nature' in his labour of` production and his enjoyment of consumption. This material practice of man is at a standstill, or assumed to be at a standstill, while the other practice, that of exchange, holds sway. This practice has no meaning in terms of nature: it is purely social by its constitution and scope. 'Not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values; in this it is the direct opposite of the coarsely sensuous objectivity of commodities as physical bodies.'" The point is that notwithstanding the negation that exchange implies of the physical realities of use and use-value, the transfer of possession negotiated under property laws in no way lacks physical reality itself. Exchange involves the movement of the commodities in time and space from owner to owner and constitutes events of no less physical reality than the activities of use which it rules out. It is indeed precisely because their physical reality is on a par that both kinds of practice, exchange and use, are mutually exclusive in time. It is in its capacity of a real event in time and space that the abstraction applies to exchange, it is in its precise meaning real abstraction and the 'use' from which the abstraction is made encompasses the entire range of sense reality. Thus we have, on the basis of commodity production, two spheres of spatio-temporal reality side by side, yet mutually exclusive and of sharply contrasting description. It would help us to have names by which we could designate them. In German the world of 'use' is often called 'the first or primary nature', material in substance, while the sphere of exchange is termed a 'second, purely social nature' entirely abstract in make-up. They are both called 'nature' to point to the fact that they constitute worlds equally spatio-temporal by reality and inextricably interwoven in our social life. The ancient legend of King Midas, who wished for everything he touched to turn to gold and died upon having his wish fulfilled, vividly illustrates how contrasting in reality and yet how closely associated in our minds both these natures are. This, in the briefest way, is the foundation on which I shall base my historical and logical explanation of the birth of philosophy in Greek society of slave-labour, and of the birth of modern science in European society based on wage-labour. To substantiate my views three points have to be established: (a) that commodity exchange is an original source of abstrac- tion; (b) that this abstraction contains the formal elements essential for the cognitive faculty of conceptual thinking; (c) that the real abstraction operating in exchange engenders the ideal abstraction basic to Greek philosophy and to modern science. On the first point, it is necessary to recapitulate the points made so far: commodity exchange is abstract because it excludes use; that is to say, the action of exchange excludes the action of use. But while exchange banishes use from the actions of people it does not banish it from their minds. The minds of the exchanging agents must be occupied with the purposes which prompt them to perform their deal of exchange. Therefore while it is necessary that their action of exchange should be abstract from use, there is also necessity that their minds should not be. The action alone is abstract. The abstractness of their action will, as a consequence, escape the minds of the people performing it. In exchange, the action is social, the minds are private. Thus, the action and the thinking of people part company in exchange and go different ways. In pursuing point (b) of our theses we shall take the way of the action of exchange, and this will occupy the next two chapters. For point (c) we shall turn to the thinking of the commodity owners and of their philosophical spokesmen, in Part II of the book. --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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