Date: Fri, 1 Nov 1996 09:14:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: subject, social theory (was: marxist, marxian...)



I located the Dilthey collection. What pages did you want?

On Thu, 31 Oct 1996, j laari wrote:


About what Marx thought he was up to: 
> 
According to my viewpoint,
> however, delivering some basic principles as Marx did (the materialist
> conception of history, as you rightly write - not histomat) is not a
> theory. It's just, well - conception of something. I take "theory" to
> mean an effort to present the basic tendencies of an object under
> consideration in a systematic categorial or conceptual way.

Well, I think a theory is ana explanatiory account, and Marx offered such
an account of the historical development of class society. We may acrp
about his presentation, but taht doesn't mnean he didn't have theories.

> 
> That's why I'd like to maintain a difference between theories of
> history and social, too.

Surely we can distinguish between a "diachronib" and "synchronic"
explanation. But Marx offers both: an acciount of the transition from
s9ome social forms to others and internal accounts of the operations of
social foermationbs, notably capitalism.

> 
> How can I say it more clearly? Marx presented great insights
> concerning genesis and maintenance of things social, but that doesn't
> count as social theory. Obviously he also had quite coherent view
> about what is "historical", "political", "social" etc. but did he ever
> presented his views in a systematic fashion - developing categories,
> showing their connections etc.? 

Presenting ones' views in a "systematic" fashion is one thing. Having
systematic views is another. Actually I think Marx's tendency to present
his views in historical form is related to his concerption of social
theory as primarily historical. 

It's as with his methodology. Surely
> he promised to write something on it, but finally main "Marx's
> methodology" seems to be in one famous introductory manuscript...
> 
Well, maybe he thought taht in the end developing systematic views about
methodology was less important than developing systematic views about
substance. I think this is a healthy attitude. We learn more about how to
do science by exemplars to good science than by philosophical analyses of it.

> 
> Can we say that "material" means "economic" in its broadest sense, as
> practices and institutions aimed at taking care of reproduction of
> population?

I'm not sure.I think it might be something more specific.

> . . . If one considers for example consciousness 'abstractly' as
> Hegel did (did he really so? I'd answer positively

I don't know what you mean by "abstractly." Hegel insisted on the
importance of the concrete, of defining each form of consciousness with
reference to its particular structure and objects.

), then there is a
> danger to misunderstand the whole phenomenon under scrutiny. I would
> ask firstly "what in Hegel is right?" Let's call it preliminarily
> "Hegel's formal schema" and state that it consists of historicity and
> interactional dialectics, to put it bluntly.. I guess everyone accepts
> this today.

Well, hardly. Anyway, I think that Marx thought that Hegel was right about
a lot more than a formal schema. Surely he accepted the Hegelian idea that
foirms of consciousness (for H) or social systems (for M) develop in
accord withan inner logic, and in trying to solve the problems they
generate are transformed into othey foerms or systems. But I think that M
also thought that H was right about the details of a lot of the forms and
their internal structures and contradictions. But M wasn't interested in a
number of the central problems of H's philosophy, notably, the atyempt to
explain how knowledge is possible. Good pragmatist that he was, M took
this for granted.

> 
> In a sense Gillian Rose (if I remember her correctly) interprets Hegel
> as theoretician of subject(-ivity) who puts the weight on aesthetics,
> religion and such things: for G.W.Fr. religion provided "formative
> experience" for "masses", aesthetics and philosophy were more
> important for only some minor groups.

I wouldn't know about Rose. H thought more ior less what you say here,
although he regards art as more important for more people than you
suggest. ANyway, Marx agrees with H on the social importance of religion
and philosophy because he's no fool. He knows that a lot more people go to
church than to graduate school.

> Now, if we think of KM's view - economy & labour as constituents of
> subject(-ivity), to put it roughly - then I'm not sure whether we can
> compare these alternatives as one being upside down and other being
> OK. They elaborated different sides or dimensions of "what we are made
> of." Intellectuals have usually had intellectualist bias and therefore
> ignored more practical and fundamental dimension of being a subject.
> This was, for me, exactly Marx's great insight - feuerbachian or not.

This is a bit cryptic.

> 
> Another question is whether aesthetic and religious experiences get
> their proper meanings in the "totality" where economy in general is a
> basic explanatory framework, as you say. I tend to think this is
> right. At least on some very general level of phil. of history. In a
> more concret analysis it might be fruitful to think of them a bit more
> 'independent'?

Sure, and Marx says this quite explicitly, in the Grundrisse, you may
recalol, where he discuss the continuing appeal to Greek art to us in an
era when we can no longer create that sort of art.

> In other words, post-structuralist critique has in its peculiar way
> concentrated (as one of its themes) on question of category "subject"
> as a unified being: what if it isn't such an unity as we have
> traditionally believed? what if we, as subjects, develop several
> patterns of different kinds of skills and "psychic formations" in
> relation to different practices and spheres of everyday life? That is,
> why it seems to be 'natural' in marxism to consider society as
> antagonistic without internal fundamental unity, but at the same time
> to consider "subject" as unified whole? I tend to be impressed by
> freudian idea of "split subject" on these matters.

Where did you get the idea that Marx views subjects as a unified whole?
The main point of the theory of alienation is that alienated man and woman
is not unified. Our lives are not what we do when we work, etc.

> To me it isn't a necessary either/or situation to think of Hegel and
> Marx on subject - they were both one-sided, in a sense. If Hegel saw
> subject in an intellectualistic way, and Marx more as practically
> situated, then there is a possibility to think that they both had
> developed dear category of subject, only from only one point of view.

Well, which will it be? Firsdt you say Marx hasn't got a point of view,
then you say his point of view is one-sided.

> Therefore I think it's justified to say that Marx was one-sided, too.
> Besides, he didn't really made strict conclusion (in a sense of
> systematic theory) of his insights. He just turned the idealist
> conception of subjectivity as something active on its feet by pressing
> that in their practices subjects are creative, innovative etc. Not a
> bad conclusion at all, but it doesn't include explanation of what this
> active subject is like 'internally', or as our bhaskarian friends
> would say, "what it must be like in order to be as a being actively
> engaged in the world."

Don't talk to me about Bhaskar. His lot are not our friends. Anyway,
what's this "what's it like" question? Are we doing phenomenology a la
Husserl? Why w\ould we wantto do that?

> 
> I'm not capable to decide whether or not Marx understood Hegel's
> "actuality".

Me neither.

 I don't think Marx was really aiming at "general social
> theory", so it's understandable that there were several categories
> lacking from his writings.

Well, maybe both of these ideas are right. M was aiming at a social theory
general enough to explain the possibility and necessity for socialist
revolution.

> So if you're saying that Marx shed some 'economic light' on
> non-economic phenomena, then I have no problems with that as such.
> Therefore I think it to be justified to say that by giving
> constitutive economic determinations to social (or non-economic)
> phenomena under consideration without proper social theoretical impact
> he could be blamed of economism even in a latter sense you outlined
> above. That is, it is justified to call an economic determination
> without other (non-economic) accompanying determinations "economism".
> I don't think it to be a big sin to present such economisms, but
> surely there's something lacking in it.
> 

If you're saying that more could be said about anything that Marx said,
sure. That's obvious. If you're saying taht there are other valid
perspectives, sure. If you're saying that Marsx only looked at economic
perspectives on anything that he considered, that's not true. It's
demonstrably false.

--Justin








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