File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9707, message 24


Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 11:08:56 -0800
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: M-I: On "Abstractions"


Patrick Murray:

"As a scientist, Marx was interested in the logic of the matters he
studied, and this logic can only be expressed in universals, which are
abstractions. Marx's point was not to replace categories (abstractions)
with empirical facts (presumed not be abstractions, but to replace those
abstractions which are prefabricated and subjectively applied to a
particular object of scientific scrutiny with abstractions that take shape
according to the specificity of that object itself. This is what I have
called Marx's *empiricism in second intension*"


"Science begins with that which is concrete in the order of actuality, with
sensuous perception, but its cogntivie working up of what is concrete in
actuality begins with conceptually abstract determinations. On the one
hand, Marx uses 'concrete' to distinguish the actual from the conceptual,
while on the on the other, he uses 'concrete' and 'abstract' within the
sphere of the conceptual to distinguish concepts that are more or less
synthetic."

"The political economists fall prey to paralogistic reasoning, or category
mistakes, when they slip determinate abstractions into the place of general
abstractions. When they subsume the *entire* spehere of production under
the logic of general abstractions, the political economists naturalize, or
dehistoricize, this sphere. When subsumed under the logic of general
abstractions, the categories of production appear immutable."

[In a discussion of Marx's critique of Bastiat, Murray also discusses the
problem of how even determinate abstractions are jumbled up by the
classical economists as well--this is very important,I believe.]

"The most demanding point of all is that Marx's concept of scientific
knowledge requires us to ascertain which are the determinate abstractions
appropriate for a particular object of study and how to order them properly
among themselves, moving from abstract to concrete."

Quotes taken from chs. 9 and 10 of Marx's Theory of Scientific Knowledge
(NJ: Humanities Press, 1990).

In this interpretation, Marx's critique seems not only to be logical
(ordering determinate abstractions properly among themselves, Bastiat being
an example of failure to do so) but also anthropological and historical
(what Murray calls here empiricism in its second intension). I should add
that I think there is much to be learned from Tony Smith about how Marx
logically ordered determinate abstractions from abstract to concrete
(sorry Hugh, I have not yet answered your question about how Smith
conceptualizes Marx's opening of *Capital*).

Rakesh




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