File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 111


Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 12:52:19 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Marx a *naive* correspondence theorist!!


I wrote:

>> Well how does Kant get out of the mind of the individual thinker and
>> perceiver then?

and Justin replied:

>Read The Refutation of Idealim in the CPR. Basically the line is taht we
>can't have coherent experience other than of external objects.

We need a bit more help from Jukka here, but in the Refutation Kant argues
that experience of ourselves ("the consciousness of my own existence")
necessarily entails experience of objects in space external to ourselves
("proves the existence of objects in space outside me"). Which is analogous
to what I've been saying in relation to the objectified, product, signalled
character of what we are able to perceive. Kant doesn't say anything about
"only" external objects being coherently experienceable, just that we can't
claim coherent experience of internal objects without immediately thereby
proving coherent experience of external objects.

The thing at issue is the status of all these internal and external objects
in relation to the mental (or transcendental) structures for perceiving,
judging, relating and understanding them. You either see the Mind (these
structures) as central (prior) or the objects (the objective universe,
external reality) as central (prior). Idealism of the broad kind (not just
Descartes' or Berkeley's, which Kant is criticizing) puts the Mind first,
whereas materialism (of the mechanical kind) puts the objective universe
first. Hegel gets beyond this impasse by fusing the two, but with the
external universe being fused into and subordinate to Mind, whcih is the
superior category (Spirit, God). Marx turns this on its head and fuses Mind
into the external universe, thereby reducing propositional reason, truth
etc to human (or analogous) activities, which may or may not emerge in the
empirical development of the processes constituting reality.

To get this far you need to realize the limitations of human perception and
thought (stuck within our individual heads) and the leaps of confidence in
the existence of people and things and processes outside ourselves needed
for individuals to overcome these limitations. Now it so happens that we're
programmed to make these leaps of confidence (it's "naive" and "intuitive"
and all the rest) to see ourselves as part of a society or some description
and an external world of some description. The programming is part of our
evolutionary equipment to orient ourselves, survive and reproduce in our
given conditions of existence. The trouble starts when you start becoming
conscious of the processes involved but can't find satisfactory
explanations. Hence philosophy and science.

It's the role of "reason" tying everything together that is central here,
because this is the locus of the leaps of confidence in what we are and
where we are and what we're doing and should be doing. And here's the
beauty of Aristotle's division of logic into Dialectical and Analytical
Logic. Analytical logic is like proven mathematical theorems -- apply it
correctly and you get answers that are right, absolutely incontrovertibly
right. But the interesting area is the dialectical one, where you have to
argue about axiomatic foundations for your theorems and demonstrate their
validity. This is where the big battle is today, concerning the foundations
of economic theory, the foundations of class analysis, the foundations of
historical processes etc. This is why "Marxism" is such a hotbed of
conflicting views, because it's the arena for the last despairing battles
of imperialist ideology to save what it can as the mode of production that
spawned it sinks stinking and bloody and writhing into the swamp of history.

For my money the pomo line is just a late arrival among the ideologies of
decaying bourgeois society that desperately try to destroy all confidence
in scientific investigations and conclusions concerning the situation of
humanity in its present state of development. Their hallmarks are
scepticism (when not outright cynicism), idealism and mystification (when
not outright fetishism and obscurantism). Kant has been misused by these
currents. In himself he is the philosopher of the moment before the
decisive world-historical victory of the bourgeois revolution in 1789
(Critique of Pure Reason 1781, Critique of Practical Reason 1788), the
final philosopher of the Enlightenment, the heroic intellectual build-up to
this victory. Just a couple of decades later (Phenomenology of the Spirit
1807, Science of Logic 1812-1816) Hegel was riding the crest of the
victorious bourgeois revolution -- the feudal shackles had been broken, the
historical straitjacket Kant was strapped inside was ripped to shreds, and
it took some time to realize what kind of new bonds were in its place.
Meantime there was an incredible feeling of euphoria and omnipotence. Marx
makes a case for the gung-ho revolutionary audacity of the Phenomenology as
against the already (comparatively) bureaucratized and rigidified Logic
(which only got worse in later editions) -- the difference between the
early liberation of Europe by the forces of the French Revolution and the
later decadence and defeat of Napleon the Emperor in conjunction with the
regroupment and resurgence of the reactionary Powers of Old Europe
(England, Austria, Prussia and Russia). In a very contradictory way both
Kant and Hegel in their day represented huge conquests for human thought.
To resurrect either of them out of historical context is just asking for
trouble, however.

As for the rest of Justin's post:

>Empirical reality is knowable for Kant. Things as they are in themselves
>apart from the conditions of knowledge aren't. To call those conditions
>"mental" is a mistake. They're not psychological states, but
>transcendental conditions. They're really not mental at all.

So what kind of figment are they?

>> Well and good. Empirically real, but unknowable. The confidence isn't there.
>
>OK, but so?

Confidence in foundations is absolutely necessary for successful building.
Confidence in what you're doing and where you're going is necessary for
things like skating, reading -- you name it. Fundamental lack of confidence
is a hugely inhibiting factor in thought and science -- what shall we
study, what methods shall we use, is it really significant, etc. This is
perhaps most visible in the "ideological" sciences such as sociology and
economics. It hamstrings linguistics too. In the natural sciences the more
openly political pressures on agendas and utilization of results make the
ideological pressures on actual scientific work less visible.


>> This is just science. If it's material, it's *potentially* perceptible. Who
>> says only what we perceive is material? Not me. (Check out Materialism and
>> Empirio-Criticism for some fun here).
>
>Lots of material things aren't even potentially perceptible. The interior
>of the sun. Quarks. Gluons. Black holes. Spacetime itself. We can perceive
>their effects, but that's something else. Anyway, it's positivist to think
>taht what makes them material is perceptibility.

Pure quibble. When I say "potential", I mean that IF we had some mechanism
by which we could sit at the event border of a black hole, THEN we could
perceive what was going on there. IF we could ride on a quark, etc. I don't
mean that it's empirically feasible, just thinkable.


>Fair enough, except when you lapse back into arguing by labeling me as
>petty bourgeois, etc.

This is not ad hominem cussing. It's based on an analysis of Justin's ideas
and the class purposes they serve. We don't build our analyses or value
judgements on the same foundations, so it's not surprising we disagree on
this point.

>> When it comes down to the actual mechanics of changing the world, Justin is
>> at a loss. He fails to see the practical philosophical drive of Marx in his
>> political party work.
>
>Sure I do. I've been in organizations for almost my whole life as a red.
>My current group, Solidarity, isa  good outfit of militant activists.

And what do people think Marx would have to say about it??


>> Would that be Absolute materialism and Absolute realism, by any chance?
>> Does Justin mean idealist in the sense that Marx was an idealist?? Absolute
>> Truth is again lurking at the bottom of this. Where does the Absolute
>> certainty of this truth come from, though?
>
>I don't know what the "absolutes" are doing here. Realism is, as I take
>it, true, what aboslute realism would be I don't know. I take realism to
>be the hypothesis that material objects exist independently of the mind
>and have more or less the properties science says they do. Truth isn't
>absolute or not, propositions are either true, because they correspond to
>raelity, or false, because they don't. It's not a notion that admits of
>degrees. Certainly, absolute or not, is beside the point. Outside math and
>logic, nothing is certain.

Sounds to me like reality is true because it corresponds to reality.

But reality is surely more than maths or logic (analytical logic), so
reality is therefore not certain. So what reality do true propositions
correspond to??

(There's a lot under the surface here, but I'll leave it at this for now.)


>Hugh makes fun of my caricature of his party and its notion of free
>discussion, but tell me, High, does your picture of the rule of your party
>have space for opposition parties?

Well, Low, since the Soviets pre-1917 had different parties, and the
reasons for banning other parties were extreme pressure and perhaps not
even then strong enough, I see no reaon at all for expecting an a priori
ban on parties of the working class, and I even see (depending on
circumstances) an acceptance of some non-working-class parties. The
overriding criterion will be the viability of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.


>> >It's anyone's guess what this means, but a reasonable approximation is
>> >that the there is no higher truth than what the party pronounces. So if
>> >the Party decrees that Lysenkoism is correct and that we can grow winter
>> >wheat, that is all the truth we need until the next Party Congress.
>>
>> This depends on the institutional clout of the party (or whatever
>> institution is involved).
>
>But if it is the party in power it will have a lot of clout, yes?

Of course. I dealt with the historical background to Lysenkoism etc in my
last post.

> This includes its authority in terms of getting
>> things right. If there is an informal institution such as public opinion
>
>But not formal organization, that is, organized oppositionw itha  chance to
>win power from the ruling party?

Again it all depends on the viability of the proletarian dictatorship. If
the opposition hopes to win power to restore capitalism, forget it.
Otherwise, go ahead. The worse that can happen if a bunch of fools win
power is that they screw a few things up and reveal themselves to be the
fools they are, and get dumped next time round (or pretty damn quick with
the right of instant recall). Always provided their foolishness doesn't
endanger the survival of the new workers' state. But this kind of
degeneration is highly unlikely very close to a successful revolution,
unless the whole of the revolutionary leadership and its most important
working-class base is destroyed in the course of the revolutionary
struggle. Something like this took place in the young Soviet Union, but
even in those extreme circumstances the process of degeneration was very
long and drawn-out.


>> Justin's final fling is good in parts, too:

[Here's the whole anecdote, for those who liked it:

(The curate has been served a rotten egg at the Bishop's breakfast:)

"I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones."
"Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!"

Punch, vol cix, p 222, 1895. As quoted in the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations, 3 ed.]

>> It's the scope, the level of understanding that matters. Plato had a grasp
>> of the impersonal institutional power of society and implacable force of
>> logic and scientific method. The Sophists were petty, individualistic and
>> arbitrary in their concepts of power, logic etc.
>
>Our picture of the Sophists derives almost entirely from Plato. It's as if
>we had to reconstruct Trotsky's views from Stalin's lies about them.

Justin forgets the power difference between Plato and Stalin. Plato
(427?-347? BC imagined a society with a dictatorial philosopher-king and
his guardian goons, but in empirical reality he was a suspect minority in
the very cut-and-thrust Athenian democracy (slave-holding, yes, on its way
to decadence, defeat and insignificance, yes, but not yet subverted by the
Macedonian empire and monarchical despotism -- Alexander the Great was only
ten when Plato died at the age of 80). His mentor, Socrates, was actually
put to death because of his oppositional leanings, and Plato spent a good
deal of energy boosting the memory of this reactionary dissident, as an
oppositional platform. He ran a successful school for rich kids (the
Academe, no less). Anyway, Plato was confident enough of his positions, and
exposed enough to public opinion to indulge in very little *Stalinist*
suppression and distortion of his opponents. "Stalinist" thuggery was
practised later on a grand scale by the Catholic church, but not so much
against the Sophists as against materialists such as Demokritos and
Lucretius. The Sophists faded because most of their useful ideas were
synthesized by others (Christ knows how many philosophers Aristotle has
synthesized out of a place in posterity). Chance has also played a part in
the survival of some Greek works at the expense of others (fire, rot, reuse
etc, during periods when the social validity of Greek learning was
practically zero).

Much the same goes for Xenophon as the Sophists, even though he was a pupil
of Socrates too. But he survives because he tells the riveting story of how
his little band of Greek mercenaries got stranded in the Persian wars and
marched through inhospitable mountains and mountain tribes (Kurds) to the
Black Sea coast and made it back home again.

Cheers,

Hugh








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