From: jinigo-AT-inscri.org.ar (Juan Inigo)
Subject: M-TH: Marxian Economics, idealism
Date: 	Tue, 4 Nov 1997 02:36:11 -0300


James Heartfield writes:

>How Marx uses this is to distill the complexity of the economy down to
>its most elemental form, the commodity, and through logical
>reconstruction, re-build the capitalist economy from its most simple
>form throughto its most complex. Unlike the first kind of abstraction
>Marx makes, the abstraction 'commodity' is the starting point for what
>Tony Smith calls a 'categorial development' (Logic Of Marx Columbia
>University Press), by gradualy adding in greater complexity to the
>commodity, subdividing it into commodities and money, money and capital,
>the commodity labour-power, value and surplus value, etc. These later
>categories are also abstractions, but there relatation to the initial
>abstraction, the commodity, is that they are more complex, drawing in
>more determinations. In this way Marx's theoretical reconstruction moves
>from the abstraction commodity to the concrete Capital (just as his
>initial investigative research had worked in the opposite direction,
>from the economy as a whole, to the isolation of its characteristic
>element). ... But this concrete is not literally the same as the
>concrete external world. Rather it is a reconstruction in thought of the
>concrete world, through the process of abstraction and categorial
>development.

Karl Marx writes:

'De prime abord, I do not start from "concepts," and therefore, not from
the "concept of value" either, so I do not have to "divide" in whichever
way this concept. Where I start from, is the simplest social form in which
the product of labor in present-day society takes form, which is a
"commodity".' (Notes on Wagner)

'Here, there only exists a "logical" opposition for Rodbertus and the
doctoral German schoolteachers like him, that start from the "concept" of
value, and not from the "social thing," the "commodity," and then the
concept divides itself (unfolds itself) by itself as if it had two faces,
to end up discussing, which of the two chimeras was the one they were
looking for.' (Notes on Wagner)

'Later, before leaving this problem, it will be necessary to correct the
idealist way of presenting it, that gives the impression of being about
pure conceptual definitions and the dialectics of these concepts. Hence, it
must be criticized above all the assertion: the product (or activity)
becomes commodity; the commodity becomes exchange value; exchange value
becomes money.' (Grundrisse)

"_Logic_ [the pure _speculative thought_] is the _money_ of spirit, the
speculative, the _thought-out value_, of man and of nature; its essence
that has become completely indifferent to any real determination and which
is, therefore, unreal; it is the alienated thought that hence abstracts
from nature and the real man; the _abstract_ thought." (1844 Manuscripts)


One of two:

a) James is right about Marx's method. But in that case, Marx is an
incoherent who does exactly the opposite of what he says scientific method
is about: after criticizing logic as the "alienated thought", he uses a
logic; after criticizing the "division of concepts", he "subdivides
categories"; after criticizing his own drafts for the idealistic
appearances of being about "pure conceptual definitions and the dialectic
of these concepts," he actually moves from one abstraction to the next
through the development of categories ("categorial development"); after
stating that a commodity is the "simplest social form in which the product
of labor in present-day society takes form", he treats "a commodity" as an
abstraction.

b) James has condensed in one phrase, with the help of Tony Smith, the
complete inversion of Marx's method, putting dialectics again on its head
(though essentially impoverished with respect to Hegel's inversion).

Obviously, I chose b).

The essence of the question of materialism and idealism does not arise in
an abstract way from putting _matter_ instead of _idea_, and vice versa, at
the starting point of a mental construction produced by following a
constructive necessity, external to the real one, i.e., a logic. On the
contrary, the idealist inversion inheres in the structure itself of this
method. The logical concept emerges from the externality of an initial
definition and is thereafter expanded by adding to it, in a non less
external way, the appearances of reality. But, however alien to the real
necessity of the phenomenon this ideal construction is, it is developed
with the only intention of presenting it as accounting for the cause of the
phenomenon. Therefore, its authors are naturally prone to fall into the
idealist inversion that ends up seeing the thus produced concept, not as a
representation of the real form any more, but as its determinant. Modern
physics, that considers itself free from any metaphysics and looks down on
the scientific cognition of social forms believing it is condemned by
nature to metaphysics, is the kingdom of this inversion.

Hegel does but to develop this inversion to its necessary extreme. He
directly inverts the development of the real necessity, placing it as the
development of the constructive necessity inherent in the ideal
representation, that is, as the development of logic itself. He overcomes
thus the twofold externality of the logical concept with respect to the
real necessity. But he does so at the expense of representing that concept
as the determinant of the real form, not any more in an external way by
giving it as the cause of the real form, but as the necessity itself that
in its own development takes concrete form as the real object.

Marx opposes to this inversion the determination of the concept, not as
inherent in the real object, but in the process of its cognition. But not
as a determination that belongs to a mental construction that follows its
own necessity (a logic), external to the real necessity, either. For Marx,
the concept results from the _reproduction_ of the real necessity in
thought. Therefore, it cannot be produced by following a constructive
logical necessity, but by unfolding by means of thought the necessity of
the real form one wants to consciously act upon (transform), starting from
its simplest concrete manifestation. Concerning capitalism, the commodity.

Juan Inigo
jinigo-AT-inscri.org.ar



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