File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9712, message 478


Date: Sun, 14 Dec 1997 13:15:32 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: M-TH: Response to Re: Christopher Phelps' *Young Sidney Hook*--chapter 1


List,

I want to thank James for bringing this matter to the list. There is a
growing recognition among historical materialists that there are parallels
between pragmatism and their take on realism and naturalism, and the
Marxian conception of truth and praxis. James and I have been discussing
for a long time, but not in near enough detail, the matter of G. H. Mead's
evolutionary theory of the self and cognition and where it fits in with
Marx's theory and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Mead's work is to be
distinguished from the mindless behaviorism of his day in that Mead's work
is dialectical. Mead's theory of consciousness is simply the finest ever
developed, and it is strikingly Marxian in its formulation, so it is worth
discussing the matter. This matter has direct bearing on the matters
discussed on this list. What follows is a systematic, though pared down,
review of some of the parallels between social pragmatism and historical
materialism. This post, while primarily presenting preliminary findings
from a lengthy theoretical study I am presently engaged in, also collects
together some of the comments I have made over the past two or three weeks
on this list and gives them their proper citations. I always promise to
come back with better citations and sometimes fail to follow up with a
bibliography. I promise this time that a bibliography will follow this
post. I do not in the post support Sidney Hook's formulations (I am only
generally familiar with Hook's work), although Hook's early work is worth
investigating and not to be dismissed on the basis of his right turn,
which I predict will be the reaction here by those who oppose to the
science of historical materialism the ideology of dialectical materialism. 

Marxists usually dispute the parallels that can be drawn out between
historical materialism and pragmatism. But how does one account for such
obvious statements of pragmatism as these? 

	All social life is essentially practical. All the mysteries which
	lead theory into mysticism find their rational solution in human
	practice and in the comprehension of this practice" Marx (1983, p.
	157). 

	The question whether human thought can arrive at objective truth
	is not a theoretical but a practical question. It is in practice
	that man must prove the truth, that is, the reality, the
	exactness, the power of his thinking. The dispute over the reality
	or non-reality of thinking isolated from practice is a purely
	scholastic question. (Marx 1983, p. 156) 

Lefebvre argues that the pragmatist position implies a "total rejection of
theory in favor of practicality" (1968, p. 34). He contrasts this with the
theoretical Marx. Lefebvre is correct; Marx does not overthrow theory. 
However, Lefebvre's understanding of pragmatism is superficial--pragmatism
does not reject theory for instrumentalism. Rather, pragmatists see theory
as systems of ideas generated and validated in practice. What is more,
Marx takes theory only to a point and then calls for action. "Philosophers
have only interpreted the world in various ways;  the point is to change
it" (1983, p. 158), he writes. 

Avineri (1968) takes a different tack in his criticism. Avineri argues
that "the verificatory nature of human action (praxis) according to Marx
has caused scholars uncritically to equate Marx with pragmatism" (p.  74). 
Avineri singles out Hook in the regard, charging this equation overlooks
the obvious difference between the two theories. 

	Whereas pragmatism starts with the premise that man adapts himself
	to a given, pre-existing environment, Marx views man as shaping
	his world. Marx's view are also quite incompatible with William
	James' other premise about the basic irrationality of the external
	world.  Marx, on the contrary, always argues that the world is
	open to rational cognition because it is ultimately shaped by man
	himself and man can reach an adequate understanding of his
	historical activity. (Avineri 1968, p. 74-75) 

But William James is only minimally representative of the pragmatism
advanced by Marxists sharing these conceptions. When one moves away from
subjectivism of James, Avineri's point diminishes significantly. We need
to get past the strawmen (created by two Marxists I admire greatly, I
should note). 
 
G. H. Mead was aware of the characterization of pragmatism by European
scientists: "Pragmatism is regarded as a pseudo-philosophic formulation of
that most obnoxious American trait, the worship of success" (Mead, quoted
in Joas 1997, p. 36). Joas (1997) notes that "such misrepresentations
concealed even from Marxists the extraordinary proximity between Marx's
philosophy of praxis and the fundamental principle of pragmatism" (p. 36).
These parallels should be explained. Much confusion arises over this
matter. 

Dewey, along with Peirce, was inspired by the objectivist idealism of
Morris. Dewey followed Morris to Michigan where he met Mead. Dewey and
Mead worked these ideas into psychology. Dewey then moved to the
University with Chicago, taking Mead with him. However, Dewey and Mead
were not idealists. This error is repeated often. For example, in his
criticism of Rorty, Habermas (1994) writes, "German idealism; this type of
idealism has found equally influential proponents in the tradition of
Peirce, Royce, Mead, and Dewey, in which Rorty prefers to place himself"
(p. 197). True, Rorty, is an idealist. But one is hard pressed to place
the others Habermas mentions here in the idealist camp.

Where do pragmatists, e.g., Dewey and Mead, really stand? They are
realists and dialecticians. Their method of science is very Marxist. For
example, Dewey's idea of "warranted assertability" in his conception of
truth parallels historical materialism. Gramsci notes that "as a
philosophy, historical materialism asserts theoretically that every
'truth' thought to be eternal and absolute has practical origins and has
represented or represents a provisional value" (1996, p. 188). Gramsci
himself noted this connection. He writes that "it is necessary to study,
above all, Bergson's philosophy and pragmatism to find out to what extent
certain positions of their would have been inconceivable without the
historical link of Marxism" (1996, p. 141). 

I will use the pragmatism of G. H. Mead to make the points of contact
clearer. But first I want to review the difference between logical
positivism/logical empiricism and dialectical science.

In contrast to the popular ideal of science, pragmatists and historical
materialists hold that the world is always changing. It is changing
because of forces inherent in the movement of the world through time. And
the world is changing because humans are changing it. Scientific laws are
not "discovered" in the positivist sense; scientists construct laws. Laws
are not eternal but hold as long as the present structure of reality
holds, or until the scientist can find a better way to explain reality.
Furthermore, the world is a concrete totality, and must be understood in
these terms. A method approaching a solution to the problematic of
historicity in scientific production, without at the same time lapsing
into idealist relativity or objectivist idealism, and that analyzes the
world holistically, presents an alternative to the dominant social
scientific standpoints of positivism and neo-positivism. This method is
found in the dialectic. The opponents of historical materialism on this
list presuppose, along with their positivist colleagues, the unchanging
and a priori character of the external world. Their thinking is decidely
undialectical.

Dialectic in philosophy and science has multiple forms. Bhaskar (1989) 
identifies three general forms of dialectic in science: (1) 
epistemological dialectics, which concern proper scientific method (or
logic); (2) ontological dialectics, which conceptualize certain objective
features existing in social forms (and sometimes natural forms, which I
reject because it presupposes the separation of man and nature); and (3) 
relational dialectics, which conceptualize the movement of history (the
diachronic) typically depicted as a process of the unity of contradictions
(which must be carefully interpreted). These three forms converge (with
alterations), and in a real sense conflate, in the thinking of Marx and
Mead. Therefore, considering Marx and Mead's instrumentalist standpoint,
one may include among these three dialectics a fourth dialectic: practical
dialectics (Bhaskar 1993). Both Marx and Mead imagine truth and practice
as constituting a unity that moves dialectically. 

Before moving to an explication of dialectic as conceptualized by Marx and
Mead, I need to discuss the form of dialectic found in Hegel and Fichte.
Key features of these early formulations are retained by the
instrumentalist traditions of dialectical reasoning. A grasp of Fichte and
Hegel's general philosophical stance is therefore vital to fuller
understanding of the scientific thinking expounded in the work of Mead and
Marx. Marx is educated during a time when Hegelian thought, both orthodox
and radical, comprised the main intellectual current in the German
academy. Marxian scholars (e.g., Lukacs 1972; Marcuse 1972; Avineri 1968; 
Lefebvre 1968) have argued, against the dialectical materialists and
French structuralists (e.g., Althusser 1970), that Hegelian philosophy
remains an integral part of Marxian thought throughout his career (Gramsci
would not disagree, but would stress that historical materialism stands on
its own). Even Lenin noted this when, after reading Hegel, he remarked,
"It is impossible to fully grasp Marx's Capital and especially its first
chapter, if you have not studied through and understood the whole of
Hegel's Logic. Consequently, none of the Marxists for the past half
century have understood Marx" (quoted in Neill 1974, p. 37). The
pragmatism influencing Mead is likewise shaped by Hegelian philosophy.
And, as Joas (1997) notes, Mead is deeply influenced by Fichte. The
discussion of Fichte and Hegel takes place in the form of the problematic
of the possibility of knowledge. Both of these philosophers, despite their
speculative metaphysics, break down key antinomies plaguing social
thought.

The central problem in philosophy and science identified by those working
in the objective idealist tradition is the Western division of reality
into mind and matter, with the corresponding philosophical systems
developing out of this division idealism and materialism respectively. 
The method if idealism is the logical analysis of concepts. The
materialist method involves causal analyses of material events. One of the
problems is how to get these methods into unity. The limitation is that
"the logic common to both rests on analysis, the division of the whole
into constituent parts" (Ball 1979, p. 786). This division finds its most
obvious expression among the followers of Aristotle. Aristotelian logic,
and a particular idea of the abstract-concrete distinction, remains the
driving force behind contemporary theory construction. 

Aristotle developed three laws to codify his formal logical ventures: the
"law of identity," the "law of non-contradiction," and the "law of the
excluded middle." The law of identity demands internal consistency in the
formulation of categories. The law of non-contradiction insists on the
mutual exclusivity of categories. The law of the excluded middle holds
that boundaries must be maintained between categories (Aristotle 1990; 
Barnes 1993).


To locate this thinking in the milieu of modern sociological theorizing,
theory is, according to Parsons, "a logically integrated set of
propositions about the relations of variables," sets of propositions
defined by Parsons as "abstract theoretical entities" (quoted in Ball
1979). In The Social System, his definitive statement of his theoretical
system, Parsons argues that his "is not an attempt to formulate a theory
of any particular concrete phenomenon, but is the attempt to present a
logically articulated conceptual scheme" (1951, p. 536). The oft-heard
criticism of Parsonsian structural-functionalism, that it is hard to get
down to reality from this system (Horowitz 1971), stems from the
elimination of empirical referents from conceptual systems in this theory
in what amounts to the forced division and categorization of organic
totalities at absolute levels of abstraction.  With the formulation of
concepts couched at this level of abstraction (in the Aristotelian sense),
and demanding categorical formality, contextuality (in the objective
idealist sense) evaporates; concepts, as pure types, rise above their
concrete referents to command reality from the heavens, imposing an ideal
order upon the world that excludes actuality. The purpose of these
(artificial) axioms and procedures is admirable--to build logically tight
and categorically closed conceptual systems--but through this method the
conceptual systems produced typically become ahistorical and disconnected
from the real world. They become "abstract theoretical entities." 

For Hegel, "an `abstract theoretical entity' is the result of an
absolutistic thought process by which some aspect of empirical reality is
torn out of context" (Ball 1979, p. 787). "Unlike Aristotelians," Ball
stresses, Hegel "stresses the diversity of internal empirical content
rather than the surface similarity of logical form" (1979, p. 787).
Hegel's focus is on the concrete totality. Hegel observes that "the true
is the whole" (quoted in Copleston 1994). Grier (1997) notes this is
because "Hegel's use of the abstract/concrete distinction is strikingly
different from the one commonly made in the empiricist tradition" (p.
178). 

	In the empiricist usage, the particular (e.g., whatever could be
	the object of some sense experience, the empirically real) is
	declared to be the concrete, and the universal (e.g., whatever
	could be shared in common by many particulars) is viewed as the
	paradigm of the abstract....  Thus what is real in the empiricist
	tradition is thought to be what is particular (and hence also
	concrete);  conversely, what is universal is thought to be
	abstract and hence not concrete, not real.  (1997, p. 178) 

In contrast,

	when Hegel refers to something as abstract, he means that it is
	being treated as separate, drawn apart from some unity of the
	whole to which it properly belongs. A universal may be treated
	abstractly as well as a particular. To treat something in this
	fashion means to adopt a partial, or one-sided view of the
	thing.... To conceive a thing abstractly is to conceive it as
	merely immediate, not mediated by its relation to some larger
	whole. (1997, p.  178) 

Hegel's argument is, in part, a response to Kant. Kant attempts to solve
the problem of excessive abstraction (in the Aristotelian sense) with
little success. For Kant, all men can have are appearances, i.e., the
empirical/phenomenal world. The thing in itself, that is, the reality
beyond conscious reflection of reality, is unattainable because of
intervening conscious. To transcend this limitation in Kant, Hegel reworks
Leibniz's theory of the universe, the latter's theory of the "monad" and
the idea of self-causing form and force, an entelechy. In Hegel, the
entelechy becomes absolute; the universe becomes a differentiated
totality. "Hegel stresses that parts are abstractions from a concrete
world of related expressions and that various aspects should not be
understood as effects of some specific causes but as expressions of the
same empirical whole" (Ball 1979, p. 787). The totality is self-caused,
determined by an internal dynamic unique to the totality at its given
level of development. Thus, "the dialectical tradition rejects the
formalism of logical analysis and the determinism of causal analysis
because it rejects the taxonomic mode of logic in favor of holism" (Ball
1979, p. 787). Leibniz's entelechy gives Hegel an idea of the structure of
the totality by giving him a thing in itself. Now Hegel needs to find a
way to access the thing in itself without eliminating consciousness, which
seemed to be the implication of Kantian idealism. Hegel accomplishes this
by absolutizing the subject. Hegel "did not eliminate consciousness," 
Avineri observes; he "reasserted it panlogistically" (1968, p. 66). The
thing of itself is knowable because the subject is the thing in itself
only estranged. 

There are some important implications stemming from the Hegelian solution;
for Hegel's world becomes not only an entirely different method for
thinking about the world, but an entirely different sort of world to think
about. As I have argued, traditional logic has difficulty accounting for
reality in transformation (see Kosco 1993). Hegel's work helped clear a
path for understanding why. While the future is built on a foundation of
the present and the past, phases of reality are not just quantitatively
different--they are qualitatively differentiated. The Aristotelian "law of
identity," which assumes internal consistency of the content given by the
form upon which the category is based, runs headlong into a world whose
empirical content is always changing. Concrete reality becomes distorted
through categorical abstraction. Hegel has an idea about why the world is
dynamic: the self-caused movement of differentiation. The behavior of
objects are not to be explained by external forces, but rather the objects
are parts of relations that behave according to the logic of the whole of
which they are parts and that they constitute. The expression of any part
of the whole is a consequence of the whole.  "Analysis," therefore, must
be concrete and holistic. 

As brilliant as all this is, Hegel's solution to key epistemological
problems pulls him from the threshold of a genuinely scientific worldview.
He ultimately argues that the universe is an expression of man's essential
contemplative powers. Man is alienated from the world he contemplates.
Understanding the world as it really is, for Hegel, is a thinking process
of returning to consciousness that which has lived alienated in
consciousness. Even more problematic, is that somewhere in this reality
moves an absolute spirit, an entity that, while having solved the problems
of the subjectivity of the finite self, raises the theological questions
still haunting science and philosophy. Clearly, then, the solution to the
problem is not found in Hegel, at least not in a complete and systematic
way. The solution to Hegel is Marx. But before moving to this matter, more
foundation must be laid. 

Joas (1997) argues that, far more than Hegel or Schelling, "Mead's
conception of the situation in which action occurs can in large measure be
elucidated by [Fichte]" (p. 48).  What intrigues Mead is Fichte's concern
over the matter of world construction by subjects and the process of moral
praxis that underpins this construction. For Fichte, the problem is how a
world that is independent of the self is captured in the internal field of
subjectivity. Fichte's solution is similar to Hegel's: create an absolute
subject by projecting consciousness panlogistically. Nevertheless, Joas
finds two themes in Mead's interpretation of Fichte that become central to
Mead's theory of self and society. 

First, Fichte presents a sophisticated account of the formation of the
self. He argues that the self is "dependent on the objectifications of our
practice, and cannot be achieved through mere introspection that does not
lead to the subject's attention to the external world" (Joas 1997, p. 
49). Immediately apparent is the similarity with Marx's (1987; 1983) 
argument that the world and the self are the objectification of man's
objective (or essential) powers. Crucially, Marx's argument appears closer
to the Fichtean formulation than to the Hegelian. Marx's (1983)  criticism
of Feuerbach is precisely because Feuerbach supposes that the world can be
accessible to the self through contemplation, and thus Feuerbach does not
understand reality as the sensuous production of human practical activity.
What is particularly relevant here is that Mead finds the same problem
addressed in Fichte's work, and the similarity in the logic Marx and Mead
deploy after taking over the form of Fichte's argument reveals another
convergence in their work. Marx and Mead arrive at this theory
independently. In describing Fichte's work, Mead writes,

	One does not get at himself simply by turning upon himself the eye
	of introspection. One realizes himself in what he does, in the
	ends which he sets up, and the means he takes to accomplish those
	ends. He gets the rational organization out of it, sees a
	relationship between means and ends, puts it all together as a
	plan; and then he realizes that the plan of action presented in
	this situation is an expression of his own reason, of himself. And
	it is not until one has such a field of action that he does secure
	himself. This process, according to Fichte, is what is continually
	taking place. The self throws up the world as a field within which
	action must take place; and, in setting up the world as a field of
	action, it realizes itself. (Mead 1936, p. 90) 

The second theme Mead develops in Fichte is "a dialectical relationship
between the delimitation of the self and its embeddedness"  (Joas 1997, p.
49) in the totality. The "constitution of a finite self is possible only
within the framework of an overarching unity which has the character of a
self" (Joas 1997, p. 49). Here Fichte posits the absolute self, a concept
Mead finds unacceptable in its objective idealist form.  Mead grounds this
idea in the material world, seeing an analog between the absolute self and
society. Mead writes: 

	Now what the philosophical imagination of Fichte did was to go
	beyond this conception which united man with society, and to
	conceive of the man as an integral part of the universal Self,
	that Self which created the universe.... Now what Fichte did was
	to conceive of an Absolute Self which is just such an organization
	of all selves; an infinite Self which is the organization of all
	finite selves. Then, just as society sets its tasks in terms of
	the acts of all its members, so the infinite and Absolute Self
	sets the task for itself in terms of all the functions of finite
	selves that go to make it up. The universe as such is, then, the
	creation of this Absolute Self in the same sense as cultivated
	areas and great metropolitan areas are created by the society that
	lives in them.... In this view we are all parts of God. We each
	have a finite part in an infinite creative power. Organized in the
	one Self we, together with an infinite number of other selves,
	create the universe. And for Fichte this creation is moral, for he
	conceives of the world as an obligation, as a task which the
	Absolute Self has to carry out, has to fulfill. (Mead 1936, p.
	101) 

Again, the analog of the absolute self and society Mead finds in Fichte is
strikingly similar to the analog that Marx finds in Hegel's conception of
the absolute idea. "In Mead's view, Fichte's limitation as an idealist
could be seen in his attempt to integrate the evolution of the world as a
phase of human moral experience; he failed at the task of conceiving of
evolutionary emergence of human beings from a pre-human age of the world's
development" (Joas 1997, p. 50). Still, Fichte's insights, namely, "the
constructional character of the self, his conception of the moral problems
confronting the self, which served as a paradigm for the theory of action,
his thesis that self-reflectivity is related to action, the dialectic of
individual and collective self contained in his notion of the absolute
self, and the relationship of this dialectic to the collective
transformation of the world--all of these features of Fichte's philosophy
make him an important precursor of the concept of "practical
intersubjectivity", or of a philosophy of praxis that theoretically
accounts for intersubjectivity" (Joas 1997, p. 50). 

In terms similar to Marx, Mead finds fault with absolute idealism.  Mead
writes: 

	The grandiose undertaking of Absolute Idealism to bring the whole
	of reality within experience failed. It failed because it left the
	perspective of the finite ego hopelessly infected with
	subjectivity, and consequently unreal. From its point of view, the
	theoretical and practical life of the individual had no part in
	the creative advance of nature. It failed also because scientific
	method, with its achievements of discovery and invention, could
	find no adequate statement in its dialectic. (1964, p. 306) 

With all this in mind, we can see several problems face Marx in reworking
Hegel's system.  Harris writes that "the logical method that Hegel
presented as the climax of the Logic in which it was employed is really
not a method at all, but only a name for Hegel's own genius" (1997, p. 
30).  Marx's challenge is to find a way of keeping Hegel's "genius" while
pulling from the latter's thought a scientific method. 

For Hegel, reality, in which he identifies the dialectic, is reflected in
consciousness. The dialectic therefore appears in consciousness, but is
actually in reality.  But, for Hegel, reality is, in turn, alienated
consciousness. This is a double mystification; Hegel is committing what
Bhaskar (1989) calls the "epistemic fallacy," i.e., the reduction of the
world to knowledge about the world, at the same time projecting
consciousness panlogistically. Marx agrees with Hegel that objective
antagonisms propel history, but he rejects Hegel's theology. The form
found in Hegel's thinking, according to Marx (1976, 1973), is the real
structure and relations of the social world, conditioned by past
sociomaterial development, and conditioning future sociomaterial
development.  The content, according to Marx, is an emergent and novel
substance produced by the unique motion of historically specific
structures and processes (Postone 1996). In this formulation, form does
not lie in the future as a cause of present content, as with Hegel; 
although elements of its future basis lie in the present, the future is
not determined by the present, but rather conditioned or limited by it. 
Here, Marx gets around Hegel's teleology by grounding the latter's
dialectic. 

Mead's attack on psychological parallelism, the position that there exists
in the mind a representational world that mirrors or parallels the
physical world, perhaps best reveals the dialectical and realist position
in Meadian thought. And this has great bearing on the false position held
by my opponents who advance Engels position which is drawn from
psychological parallelism which was the dominant construct in Engels day. 
Psychological parallelism grew out of problems arising from the
philosophical and scientific division of reality into mind and body I have
described here. The main problem of this division, led by reductive
materialism and a focus on observable physical phenomena, a conceptual
fragmenting of the totality by division rather than differentiation, was
that in this fashion the mind is banished to a residual category.
Behaviorists went even further in rejecting of the concept of mind as a
scientific category; the mind was a remnant of theology. As Mead notes in
discussing the work of a contemporary, "John B. Watson's attitude was that
of the Queen in Alice in Wonderland--'Off with their heads!'--there were
no
such things. There was no imagery, and no consciousness" (1934, p. 2-3).
For Mead, this was to deny the obvious. 

Generally accepting the philosophical assumption of their day, advocates
of psychological parallelism attempted to resurrect the reality of the
mind as a thing in the world by arguing that the organism mediates between
nature and mind, and the organism is a natural object explicable in terms
of matter in motion, following from the premise of reductive materialism.
With this, they thought, they could have it both ways--avoid the
elimination of the mind, at the same time not reconceptualize the mind as
something other than what it was already thought to be: some sort of fixed
a priori entity. This "solution" leaves unexplained the connection between
the representational world and the physical world. In psychological
parallelism, everything not explicable in physicalist terms is still
placed in the realm of the mind. 

Other positions emerged in reaction to reductive materialism, as well, and
moved in a different direction. On the heels of the ontological division,
Mead notes, there also developed

	an objective idealistic system in which nature was taken entirely
	into mind, not as the representation of an actual or possible
	reality outside of mind, but as the sum total of reality, the
	subject-object relation existing not between mind and what lies
	outside of mind but between different phases of the spiritual
	process of reality (1977, p.  88). 

Mead notes that the objective idealist perspective "identified the process
of reality with cognition, while experience shows that the reality which
cognition seeks lies outside cognition, was there before cognition arose,
and exists independent of cognition after knowledge has been obtained" 
(1977, p. 88). I have already discussed this movement at length. What is
important here is that Mead is asserting, contrary to the idealist
position, an objective, mind-independent reality. This realist position
serves as the basis for his critique against the Hegelians and other
idealist positions. Ironically, Mead is often portrayed as a subjectivist
and idealist (see Blumer 1969). 

Mead notes two reactions to the position of psychological parallelism that
advance knowledge beyond the mind-body/subject-object division, namely,
realism and pragmatism. Mead spends little time explicitly discussing
realism in his work, other than to note its naturalistic focus and the
analysis of the role of cognition in this focus. Like Marx, however, a
hard realism underpins Mead's work, particularly in the ontological status
Mead gives to natural and social relations; relations lie in the forms
themselves, not only in the imposition of the mind (Mead 1934).  This
realism is what sets Mead (and Dewey and Whitehead) apart from James. Mead
reveals his dialectical and realist standpoint in his critique of
psychological parallelism, by taking "the relation of mind to body from
the standpoint of pragmatism" (1977, p. 89). The foundation for this
standpoint is the character of reflection (which differs dramatically from
the empiricist concept of reflection advanced by Burford and others on
this list). Mead writes,

	reflection, including cognition and thought, is a phase of conduct
	within which conflicts between reactions are met by reorganization
	of the environment and of the tendencies within the organism to
	respond to it--the validity of the reorganization, and therefore
	of the object of reflection, being tested by the success of the
	reconstruction. (1977, p.  89). 

The form of logic in this argument is dialectical. The ontology rests on a
materialist premise. The parallel with Marx here is particularly striking.
>From the perspective of the materialist dialectic, confrontations with
limitations are met with a reorganization of surroundings and a
corresponding transformation of the self and the future character of
responses, i.e., transcending limitations through synthesis.  When men
change history men change themselves: "As a man adjusts himself to a
certain environment he becomes a different individual; but in becoming a
different individual he has affected the community in which he lives"
(Mead 1934, p. 215). The very act of existing, according to Marx,
transforms existence (1987). Object and subject are joined in dialectical
unity and both transform the other. 

Mead moves the nexus of mediation from the organism standing in between
the mind and environment, as advanced by psychological parallelism, to the
mind as one mediating factor standing between nature and the organism.
Nature and the individual constitute a single differentiated reality, and
the mind is the activity negotiating poles of the organic unity from which
it emerges.  Mead stresses that systems of thought must reflect the
concepts of emergence and relativity. Leibniz's entelechy ultimately find
its way into Mead through Fichte and Hegel:  "Anything that as a whole is
more than the mere form of its parts has a nature that belongs to it that
is not to be found in the elements out of which it is made" (Mead 1934, p.
329). From this premise, Mead draws his definitive statement regarding
social psychology:  

	We are not...building up the behavior of the social group in terms
	of the behavior of the separate individuals composing it;  rather,
	we are starting out with a given social whole of complex
	activities, into which we analyze (as elements) the behavior of
	each of the separate individuals composing it. (1934, p. 7)

But a singular focus on his social psychology by some writers obscures the
materialist point Mead is making here. The mind is a social product and,
arising in the life-process, it is transformed through adaptation to an
ever changing reality.  It must be analyzed as behavior in the context of
the social totality. The mind is the result of a long evolutionary
process. The mind is not the ghost in the machine, but is the active
process of the organism negotiating its environment. Mead vanquishes the
soul without vanquishing humanity. Mead position may be summed up
precisely by quoting Marx: "It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
determines their consciousness" (1983, p. 160).

Just as Mead's focus on consciousness should not distract from the
materialism that underpins his position, the materialist foundation of
Marx should not be confused with physicalism. Consciousness is not a
by-product of the brain in Marx's theory. Indeed, Marx argues that
consciousness is an integral part of human life. In an eloquent passage in
Capital Marx writes:  

	A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and
	a bee puts to shame many a human architect in the construction of
	its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect
	from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his
	mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labor
	process, a result emerges which had already existed ideally. Man
	not only effects a change in the form in the materials of nature;
	he also realizes his own purpose in those materials. (1990, p. 284)

Finally, both Marx and Mead stress the relatively of the environment to
the individual experiencing that reality. This is a materialist
relativity. Fisk explains:  the overall explanatory logic of Marxism is a
logic of relativity. Theories and concepts are formed within practice in
order to advance it. Thus they are relative to given objective
circumstances. Only if the interconnectedness of things within wholes were
abandoned could concepts and theories be held to transcend practice. In
addition, causal and teleological connections are relative to the wholes
that make them possible and thus have no universal scope. (1991, p. 323) 

Mead's pragmatist position, featuring an explicit instrumentalist
conception of the truth, shares with Marxism the focus on practice,
putting the theory to work in overcoming limitations. This is advanced,
quite undeniably, to advance their respective political interests.  This
position also logically follows from the premise that man's activity
inevitably transforms the world and himself. So it is not ideological, but
theoretical and potentially objectifiable. This mode of conceptualizing
the world, incorporating materialist premises and the historicist critique
of the nomothetic, is to be distinguished from the idealist version of
relativity, which has profound implication for theories of language and
cognition contrary to Mead's theory, but frequently attributed to Mead
(such as in Blumer 1969). Fisk continues, "Marxist views of concepts
differ from those that emphasize the relativity of reference to language.
Such views start with language and inevitability are trapped within
language. But for Marxists the relativity of concepts is to social, and
ultimately class, circumstances that themselves embody physical systems.
This is then a materialist rather than an idealist relativity" (1991, p.
323).

There is no compelling reason preventing us from considering Mead's
position a species of practical materialism. Mead sees the individual
living in a social and natural environment of things. At the same time,
physical individuals constitute an environment (a experientially
reflexive, cognitive, and sensory field) in which physical things are
organized. The external world is an environment for the individual. "We
thus break up our world into physical objects, into an environment of
things that we can manipulate and can utilize for our final ends and
purposes" (Mead 1934, p. 249). Mead writes that "the human form
constitutes its environment in terms of these physical things which are in
a real sense the products of our own hands" (1934, p. 249). Marx writes:
It is just in the working-up of the objective world, therefore, that man
first proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active
species-life. Through and because of this production, nature appears as
his work and his reality. The object of labor is, therefore, the
objectification of man's species life; for he duplicates himself not only
in consciousness, intellectually, but also actively, in reality, and
therefore he contemplates himself in a world that he has created. (Marx
1987, p. 77) 

Mead and Marx are arguing that reality is a reality for humans. And, in
this relation, reality is objectified, both through physical activity and
through consciousness. For Mead, as for Marx, the relation is held as
ontological. Textbook myths are overturned here--Marx is a pragmatist and
Mead is a materialist. Both are consummate dialecticians.

I appreciate the attention of those of you who have had the patience to
look through these notes. I apologize for any odd references to sections
or essays, as these notes are drawn from work I am now engaged in and I
don't have time to look search through every line and remove them. What is
more, probably the only reason for doing that would be to make it appear
as if I just generated these thoughts.

What I am presently taking up, having produced broad outlines of a
historical comparison of thought, a technique I call reclaiming
foundations, and reclaiming the dialectic and pragmatism of the positions
I have just discussed, is to bring in Darwin and explain the deep relation
between the logic of natural selection and the logic of the dialectic in
both the thinking of Marx and Mead. This work is not so much a synthesis
in production, but rather a recognition of parallels already existing.
This process of recognition helps us understand more clearly the premises
of our own positions, and it ultimately serves to root out the false
conceptions so frequently presented on this list and in the literature.

Andy






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