File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9802, message 562


Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:40:48 +0100
From: Hugh Rodwell <m-14970-AT-mailbox.swipnet.se>
Subject: Re: M-TH: being determines consciousness ?


Rob S writes:

>Sure, all facts are capable of being stated in language, but the trick is
>to distinguish between those facts that exist independently of their
>linguistic expression and those which exist only through language (the big
>lump that we call Mt Everest is one of the former and money is one of the
>latter).
>
>Money exists because we have institutionalised it.  We institutionalise
>things through language.  Language is not sufficient to institutionalise
>something (a materialist must, I think, stand by this) but it is necessary.
>The mode of production necessarily depends upon and is necessary for the
>reproduction and transformation of  institutions - ie it is a necessary,
>but not sufficient, condition for institutionalisation.

This is very confusing.

Money was a very bad example. Social facts (facts of human behaviour in
society) are obviously dependent on human existence and with this you get
language, but they exist not because of language but because of
relationships of production and distribution that are independent of
language and individual will.

Rob's unicorn would have been a better example of a fact more dependent on
language, but of course the unicorn is also dependent on such more stubborn
facts as horses, horns and human desires for beauty and justice.

There are also social aspects to the most brutish facts. Mt Everest also
has a Chinese (Tibetan) name and Chinese (Tibetan) connotations, etc. As
does the term "mountain".

It's a dialectic. Either/or gets you nowhere. There's a kind of continuum
between the most stubborn non-human facts (matter, gravity etc) on the one
hand and the most evanescent imaginary brain foam on the other (like dream
snippets we don't even remember). Such things as money, the Spice Girls and
even unicorns are way stubborn compared with really ephemeral "linguistic"
flukes of creation.

Cheers,

Hugh




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