Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 15:54:33 -0500 (EST) From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu> Subject: M-I: The Marxian Dialectic Part 1 of 4 [I was unaware of length constraints, and thus have been informed that I must break this post into four parts. I regret that this will necessitate four posts in one day, but I have been told that this will be okay in this one instance. I also apologize for the delay, for this post, written around noon on the 25th, will be read in the morning of the 26th. Due to the nature of posts contributed by my detractors I had desired a quick turn around. Note that the enumeration of parts designated in the message heading do not correspond with the parts enumerated in this post. Finally, the original post was addressed to Siddharth and Adolfo. I apologize to them in advance; they will receive this post twice.] Comrades, In this post I intend to address some outstanding issues remaining in this debate, and to address some issues that have developed over the course of the debate. This post contain little of the irritation present in my past couple of posts (although Siddharth recent post, dripping with psuedoscientific and positivist themes, makes this difficult); I have decided to leave the shouting to others. I herein honor a request that I provide excerpts from a postface by Marx that I earlier refered to. I also present excepts from an interpretation (Avineri) that is consonant with mine, as was also requested. I hope that this post clears up misconceptions surrounding my position. I do regard most of these misunderstandings not attributable to me, but I will nevertheless try to be more clear. I will not discuss Kant in this post, as I feel that Kant is tangential to this discussion. Further, I will not discuss issues of mathematics, physics and so forth because these are not relevant to the conversation. This was why I have not engaged Siddharth in a point by point debate over his positivism. In my view this constitutes a red herring. The debate is about this: did Marx advocate a position of dialectical materialism. The answer I gave was no. I intend to defend that position in this post. What Siddharth has missed about this debate is its sociology of knowledge character. He wishes to continuing presenting smart little examples in the physical sciences that demonstrate supposed objectivity (he is apparently a hardline empiricist--knowledge of the thing resides in itself!) while the discussion is about what Marx believed. Finally, and the underlying purpose of my argument (I should be honest about my motives), it must be reckoned that idealism often masquerades as materialism by attaching to itself the trappings of science. That is precisely what is happening here on my opponents' side. It is often the case that novices, with an insufficent understanding of philosophy of science, see idealism as materialism and materialism as idealism. This is clearly a failure to interrogate the deeper foundation upon which our worldviews are erected. But even more than this, it is a failure to purge from their own minds the bourgeois indoctrination that was so profound in their early school days. This empiricist, rationalist, and positivist view of the world structures their understanding of the dialectic, deforms it, and then they unreflexively map this monster back onto of their interpretations of the physical, material, and social worlds. It is a simple case of reifying analytical methods and heuristics as eternal transcendental subjects and then being ruled by human (and bourgeois) ideational creations. This is what I call the "naturalistic fallacy," and it is so subtle that it must be made brutally frank for the purposes of dislodging what amounts to brain-lock. Feuerbach's critique of religion is applicable to a critique of this sort of scientism, but I am getting ahead of myself. I. The Materialist Conception of History (Marxian General Theory) The following extract presents in very concise form Marx's general theory of social structure and social development, or what is often called "the materialist conception of history," or, more simply, "historical materialism." The passage is from the "Preface" (1959) to *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy* from his economic manuscripts of 1957-1958) and is regarded, I think without reservation, as the definitive formulation of historical materialism. "In the social production of their existence, men enter into definite, necessary relations, which are [indispensable and] independent of their will, namely relations of production corresponding to a determinate stage of development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which there arises legal and political superstructure and to which there correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or--what is merely a legal expression of the same thing--with the property relations within the framework in which they have hitherto operated. From forms of development of productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. At that point an era of social revolution begins. With the change in economic foundation the whole immense superstructure is more slowly or more rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic, in short, ideological, forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks of himself, so one cannot judge such an epoch of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, >from the existing conflicts between the social forms of production and the relations of production. A social order never perishes before all the productive forces for which it is broadly sufficient have been developed [*alternative translation*: No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed], and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the womb of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it can solve, since closer examination will always show that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the process of formation. In broad outline, the Asian, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as progressive epochs of the socioeconomic order. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonism growing out of the social conditions of existence of individuals; but the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society simultaneously create the material conditions for the solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society therefore closes with this social formation." Note: One theme in this passage, because of the variations in translation, can be translated thus: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their *existence*, but their *social existence* that determines their consciousness" [my emphasis]. Thus, according to Marx, it is not physical existence that determines consciousness, but "social existence," and this existence is socially produced. This is the social production of the material life-processes. It is "the mode of production of material life," that is, human activity in thought and labor in transforming the natural world into a human world, that "conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life." So the ideas of our intellectual life are directly tied to, and subordinated to, "the social production of our existence" and "the production of material life." Ideas like truth and law, like all other ideas, are not independent of human beings; they are productions of humans in real human activity, i.e. in their social relations, relations to the productive means, and the transformation of nature (the production of material life) in reproducing human social existence. (This addresses an issue raised by Viraj Fernando.) I would argue that if the materialist conception of history was but dialectical materialism applied to the study of history, that Marx, even if not feeling the need to present a detailed exposition of his even more general theory (dialectical materialism), would have at least indicated that historical materialism was derivative and constituted a specific application of dialectical materialism. This is not the case in this passage. And, more importantly, you can find no such indication anywhere in Marx's work. A few quotations pulled from this passage make it clear how dialectical materialism is not possible in Marx's system: (1) "The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general." Here we see that Marx regards the labor process (the production of material life) as conditioning intellectual life process in general. This statement is key to my argument stating that knowledge produced about reality is a social product. Dialectical materialism holds that the logic of the dialectic is external to social production, in fact that the dialectic is in nature. According to Marx, this is not possible if knowledge is produced by human being. Indeed, for Marx, the more general and abstract a law becomes the less valid it is. For Marx, dialectical materialism represents an idealist philosophy, for it posits the *a priori* and external existence of a logic. (2) "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary it is their social being that determines their consciousness." Being is prior to essence. But not just being--"*social* being" (or "social existence"). Marx argues that our social being, clearly bestowed by society in his theory, determines our consciousness. Part of our consciousness is intellectual production, of which scientific understanding of reality and logic are domains. If consciousness is determined by the social being, and produced in social interaction, then logics, rational or otherwise, cannot be prior to society nor external to it. (3) "Consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflicts between the social forms of production and the relations of production." Further demonstration of the above point. Marx sees consciousness as arising out of the contradictions in material life. But what is material life? What constitutes these contradictions? "The existing conflicts between the social forms of production and the relations of production," Marx answers. One of the key mistakes that people make in interpreting Marx is to mistake "material life" with "physical life." For Marx, human beings produce material life, they do so in the labor process, they work up nature for human needs and in so doing humanize the world and objectify it. For Marx human activity is objective (material) activity. Corresponding with this process are the social relations. It is upon this objective foundation that there arises forms of consciousness, and other superstructural elements. One note here: the base-superstructure model implied in this passage (although an oversimplification) is only an analytical model. Marx stressed that one cannot ontologically separate the social totality. [Part I is continued...] --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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