File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-01-31.063, message 25


Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 20:09:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Viraj Fernando <viraj-AT-interlog.com>
Subject: M-I: Sohn-Rethel/Dialectics of nature 


Yesterday I posted the following to Rakesh Bandari in M-Sc and Joao Paulo
Monteiro gave and excellent response giving his view what the Marxian system
is. I quote both below to see it in full relevance.
----
I wrote:

Rakesh,

The points you raise in your post are very relevant and important to a
dialogue that is currently going on in this list under the title "Dialects
of Nature".



>  "Sohn-Rehtel's fundamental thesis is that it is the historical appearance
    of a *real abstraction*--the commodity or value abstraction--that makes
    possible the development of those conceptual abstractions associated with
    classical philosophy, mathematics, and modern natural
    science....Sohn-Rethel's detailed theoretical analysis of the formal
    elements of the exchange abstraction, as suggested by Marx's theory of
    value, seves to demonstrate that not only analogy but 'true identity'
    exists between the formal elements of this abstraction and the formal
    cognitive constituents of those forms of thought tha tissue in the
    development of modern science. In particular, the concepts of 'abstract
    quantity', 'abstract time and space', and 'strict causality' are all
    notions that have 'real' counterparts in elements of the act of exchange.


Engels' efforts centred round hunting down the *real abstraction* in nature
as opposed to Marx hunting it down in the commodity production. Marx
succeeded, Engels could not accomplish his task. This task is yet
unfulfilled. Unfulfillment is no failure. Engels is battered and butchered
and accused for  his clumsy attempts, and failure for bringing disrepute to
Marxism. He is accused of misrepresentation of Marxism and it is even
implied that he was a racist. In terms of strict causality he has been
turned into the whipping boy for our own inability to grasp the scope, depth
and significance of marxism.

I do not know what your views are about Engels. It has to be this way or
that way. Whatever it is, you raise the question of *real abstraction*
creeping into
classical philosophy, mathematics, and natural science.

The real abstraction in mathematics is what? The mathematical axioms. This
what this "idiot" Engels says about the axioms.

"The so-called axioms of mathematics are a few thought determinations which
mathematics need for its point of departure. Mathematics is the science of
magnitudes, its point of departure is the concept of magnitude. It defines
this lamely and then adds other elementary thought determinations not
contained in the definition from outside the axioms, so they appear as
unproved and naturally also unprovable (my note: such as "a circle has 360
degrees"). The *analysis of magnitude* will yield all these axiom
determinations as necessary determinations of magnitude.... They are
provable dialectically, in so far as they are not pure tautologies".

Engels is accused of being ignorant of the theory of alienation of Marx, it
even has been suggested he worked more of less as Marx's office boy, and
worked on Marx's drafts mechanically, without much intellectual
contribution. If Engels is not talking about alienation from the point of
view of what was then termed historical materialism, what was he talking
about in the following passage?

" Like all other sciences, mathematics arose out of the *needs* of men
(emphasis in the original)...But as in every department of thought, at a
certain level of development of the laws, which were abstracted from the
real world, become divorced from the real world, and are set up against it
as something independent, as laws coming from outside, to which world has to
conform. That is how things happened in society and in the state, and this
way not otherwise, *pure* mathematics, was subsequently *applied* to the
world, although it borrowed it from the same world and represents only one
part of its forms of the
*interconnection* (emph. added) - and only *just because of this* that it
can be applied at all".

The only thing, what he has not said is the connection to commodity
production. Why? Marx's analysis, begins with exchange. Man's notions about
measurements,
his notions of space and time preceded the historical origins of exchange
and they remained in relative forms or even if they were abstracted and
raised them into universal equivalent form, the roots of this abstraction,
the interconnection remained. It is only in the commodity mode they lose
their interconnection and become independent, because the social being under
commodity production necessarily thinks in abstract terms.

In our discussion on dialectics of nature, I will be discussing the above
subject. It is not by differential equations and Reimann's geometry that we
can decipher the axioms of time and space. It is by simple silly
ratiocinations of the type that Aristotle and Marx used. We can not get at
axioms by what has been built on axioms. We get to them by getting into
their roots, that is by isolating the dialectical elements that these axioms
are composed of. For this operation, we have to get into the mind of the
primitive man and emulate his thinking and actions. To find out what TIME
is, we have to think how he may have tried to keep a track on time. How he
would have conceptualised a simultaneity out of the naturally occuring
astronomical processes (not a light beam from A to B and B to A).

I think I have enticed you enough. The position is this. There is a "novel
emergence" in the list. This discussion is carried out in a very organised
and a structured manner. We are now at round 5. Round 6 will be Siddartha
Chaterjee's. We would always welcome your comments at anytime. But if you
like we can reserve round 7 for you (Andrew, I am taking the liberty here).

The main topics of the debate:
1. Whether or not Historical Materialism as refered by Marx, and
"Dialectical Materialism" are two labels for the self same package.
2. Does Historical Materialism of Marx include laws of nature, human history
and thought or it is only applicable to socio-historical phenomena.
3. Do contradictory oppositional tendencies exist in the objective world,
and our thinking reflects these oppositional tendencies subject to
interpretation by our social being or these tendencies do not exist, nature
is undialectical as proved by the astounding successes of science of the day
and therefore we should not apply subjective dialectics on to natural phenomena.
4. Marx never spoke about natural phenomena, in the context of dialectics,
therefore it is illegitimate to smuggle in this department into the marxian
system. It is Engels and Lenin that corrupted marmism by smuggling this in and
Stalin used dialectical materialism to further his distortions of marxism.
Contrary view: Whether Marx mentioned or not, that dialectics are applicable
to natural phenomena it is implied for two reasons. From the very beginnings
marxism is a consistent system. Dialectics of nature of Heraclitus and
Epicurus seep down to marxism from Greek Philosophy. By division of
functions, Marx's work centred round Thesis I (on Fuerbach) and corollaries
and Engels on Thesis viii and corollaries. No two thinkers have worked with
such an understanding like the founders of Marxism. Marx knew what Engels
was doing and Engels knew what Marx was doing. Marx's reading of
Anti-Duhring in draft prior to publication supports this view.

If you have access to even minute reference by Marx on nature and science, I
would be thankful. (or even to the contrary). Because be the rules of the debate
we can not refer to Marx's view on dialectics of nature from second hand
sources including Engels and Lenin.

Looking forward to your response.

Best regards/ Viraj
---
Joao Pualo Monteiro wrote:

Very good debate on dialectical materialism.
I just want to state my position on it in a few brief notes.


1. On the position of Marx himself

I think that, for anyone minimally familiar with Marx=92s intellectual
biography, there can=92t be any reasonable doubt that he approved
wholeheartedly applying the dialectical approach to the natural sciences
and he saw no fundamental epistemological discontinuity between them and
what we now call social sciences. Anti-D=FChring is not a independent work
by Marx, whose philosofical =93excesses=94 Marx was too shy to criticise.
This is simply ridiculous. I=92m sorry Andrew, but if you insist on
comparing the intelectual aims and methods of work of Marx and Engels
with your relationship with your sister, you can=92t be taken seriously on
this point.
With Marx and Engels it was certainly not a question of letting him go
his own way. Sinatra hadn=92t made that point yet. I don=92t want to sound
hagyographical, but these guys are giants. They=92re on the top of the
world and they know it. They are forging weapons to turn the entire
human termitary upside down. And they were together on it, shoulder to
shoulder, to the last minute, in this unparalleled human venture. Andrew
simply doesn=92t seem to have the faintest idea of who these guys were and
what were they doing.
Anti-D=FChring was a work commended by Marx against a german professor of
that name who was having a massive success in the german socialist
movement of the 1870=92s. Marx ressented this, as he often did similar
affronts. He certainly had his character weaknesses and, moreover, he
was generally wrong measuring what was his (and his adversaries=92) time.
Anyway, Marx=92s idea was, once again (after Proudhon, Lassalle, Bakunin,
etc.), to combat what he saw as pernicious ideas developing within the
workers=92 movement, spreading his own scientific conception in their
place. Engels found D=FChring terribly boring but he completed his work,
in close contact with Marx, while the old man worked on Capital. Eugen
D=FChring was a blind man and he was immensely popular, a kind of Stevie
Wonder of the german Academy and socialism. Engels=92 attacks were very
badly received at the time. Anti-D=FChring sketches the general
philosophical outlook of marxism. It=92s a work requested by Marx,
developed between the two friends in close contact, and conceived from
the beginning as a tool for marxist theoretical warfare. To say Marx had
nothing to do with it is totally preposterous.

Marx (and not Engels by his grave) was the one who greated Darwin=92s
ideas euphorically, trying to integrate them on his general conception
of the world. He worked on mathematics and had plans for a brief
handbook on dialectics, whose rational kernel he had rescued from
Hegel=92s idealism, puting its feet on the ground. If Engels was a XIXth
century scienticist, Marx was certainly no less one. So whoever wants to
make fire on dialectical materialism has better aim at the old man
himself and stop playing games around.  I=92m not sure he would appreciate
such charitable and overflattering amputations of his thought.

2. Stalinist =93proletarian science=94 was indeed a joke, the most famous
tragi-comic episode being the Lyssenko disaster. This fiasco had its
roots in a mechanicistic approach and in a methaphisical reification of
dialectics that can be traced, but not entirely atributed, to Engels=92
Dialectics of Nature (a incomplete work first published by Riazanov in
1927) and Lenin=92s Materialism and Empirocriticism. This is the
a-historical, naturalistic dia-mat. Stalin himself wrote a little
handbook about it. It=92s a curious relic. You can shoot it at will, but I
don=92t think there=92s much point in doing it anymore. That=92s certainly not
what I would call a present day priority for us, from a class-struggle
perspective.

3. Chronic abuse of Engels ensued, beginning in the 60=92s, with a
majority of the western marxists dumping dialectical materialism
altogether and saying that marxism had, after all, nothing to say about
the natural sciences, as it hadn=92t about art, literature, etc., etc..
These currents are normally trying to integrate marxism in the bourgeois
democratic tradition (humanism, as Andrew would put it, or rationalism
in the case of his friend Habermas) and, therefore, attack all these so
called totalitarian outlooks, associated with stalinism. Pluralism and
pragmatism are other temptations. More recently, post-modernism started
talking of the demise of grand narratives (Lyotard) and making the case
for a weak (Vatimo), localised, contingent, ironic thought.

4. Marxism however is a complete weltanschaung. It=92s the world
conception of the proletariat on the rise for its class emancipation. It
opposes itself entirely to the bourgeois science and ideological
conceptions. It=92s not dialectical materialism who is incommensurable
with historical materialism. This is just a tentative to divide our camp
and integrate marxism in the bourgeois academy as some kind of
sociology,  theory of history, etc.. Trying to make Marx fit on one or
maybe two of the bourgeois separate disciplines of knowledge.
It=92s the bourgeois entire world conception who is incommensurable with
the proletarian one. Between these two outlooks there is an
epistemological break, as Althusser would put it. And class struggle
alone will bridge them. A true historicist will have no problem
understanding this.
It=92s not that physical reality itself is dialectical. This is a useless
mystical (pantheistic) claim that will only drag us into a logical short
circuit, what the latins called a petitio principii. We live in a
post-critical (kantian) world - that=92s in fact what dia-mat ignored,
regressing into XVIII century materialism. There is no pure reality out
there, independent of the (socially constructed and historically
situated) human act of its knowledge. Dialectical materialism is itself
a dialectical process. It=92s the mode of production of knowledge
characteristic of a specific social class: the proletariat. I=92m not
always very precise in this philosophical subtleties (and that gets
worse using a foreign language), but I think this gives roughly the
picture as I see it. Sohn-Rethel=92s work is very usefull here too.

5. Finally, after decades of being the underdog, developments in science
recently just keep on coming Engels=92 way, correctly understood and on
its fundamental lines. Whoever tries to reflect globally on natural
sciences these days, finds the dialectical method looking stronger and
stronger. Think of astrophysics, evolutionary theory, biology,
thermodynamics, chaos, fractals, GUT=92s, etc., etc.
Not being a specialist in the philosophy of science (besides reading
piles of scientific popularization works with great enthusiasm) I will
not try to develop this claim. I recommend an article by Paul McGarr,
=91Engels and the natural sciences=92, in International Socialism, n=BA 65
(special issue on Engels) published in December 1994, whose conclusion
chapter I am sending in a separate post.
A vast a comprehensive work on this subject (wich I haven=92t yet read
myself) can be found here on the web. It=92s Reason and Revolt-Marxism and
modern science, from Alan Woods and Ted Grant. It=92s in
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~zac/maindex.htm .

6. There=92s another, immedialely political reason why I find this subject
of dialectical materialism so decisive. I don=92t think we should just
confidently wait for the forces of production to naturally mature
themselves to the point of  requiring a revolutionary overthrow of the
relations of production. To be sure, this may well happen that way,
because the bourgeoisie is simply unable to act as an historically
conscious class or is just not shrewd enough to avoid its fate.
However, as things are at the moment, the bourgeoisie has the absolute
monopoly of scientific research and development, manipulating it at
will. I think we should bring class struggle well within the walls of
the city of science (this should not be understood literally - good
science can be made in popular clubs, worker comittes, etc.). We should
have our own rookie geniuses and cyber-punk kids placed there. This will
probably anticipate the development of the forces of production our way,
creating possibilities for the emergence of more worker-friendly
environments.
Now, for waging class war within the bourgeois science we will be
needing two things: 1) a sharpening of class struggle on society in
general; 2) this irreplaceable weapon that is dialectical materialism.


Jo=E3o Paulo Monteiro











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