Date: Sat, 30 Jul 1994 02:07:16 EST
From: Pete Bratsis <aki-AT-cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu>
Subject: RE: Retraction re Method, materialism




The discussion on the list for the last week or so seems to be stuck on 
debating the 'true' meaning of some basic Marxist terms, at times 
seeming overly conveluded and complex.  I have aways thought that materialism
simply refers to the acceptance of existance not being contingent upon 
thought.  The physical properties of a 'stone' exist outside of thought 
of it.  In this sense materialism simply refers to an ontological 
presumption (although we can also relate it to epistimology).  Materialism  
is by no means exclusive to Marxism.  By the time of Spinoza materialism 
becomes a viable alternative to idealist/theistic ontologies.  Obiously, 
materialism is very much a part of the rise of science and its replacement 
of theistic understandings of the world.  Frederick Beiser's 'The Fate 
of Reason' provides an interesting insight into the tension and battles 
between materialism and idealism in 18th century German philosophy.  
By and large, it seems to me, that social science as a rule is materialist.
Indeed, materialism is a requisite to the rise of a 'social science'.  


This having been said, materialism within Marxism does have some 
specificity.  We can, for example, distinguish betwenn ontology in 
general and particular ontology.  So while all of social science may be
materialist in the broad sence noted above, Marxism seems to have a 
particular ontology different from other currents within social science.
The 'stuff' that makes up the Marxist material world is social practice 
(Theses on Feuerbach,  #9).  Thus we can specify a particular ontology 
in terms of social relations (what Bob Jessop terms powers and relations 
realism).  Ontological catagories in Marxism are all social relationships. 
Capital is a social relation, the state is a social relation, class is a 
social relation, etc.  

Of course materialism can also be understood in terms of epistimology. 
We could, say, go the way of empiricism where the visible order of things 
presents a self-evident demonstration of the reasons for being, as 
Maurice Godelier notes, that their order makes them intelegible. 
As upposed to such elements in modern social science most clearly 
visable in behavioralism, most statistical works, etc., it seems that 
Marxism does not assume such transparency in society.  Looking to the 
first chapter of capital, we see Marx attempting to specify the content 
qua social relation 'behind' the commodity form and, more importantly since
bourgois political economy had already identified labor as the source of 
value, why labor takes on the form of commidity (a question Smith and 
Ricardo never thought of asking) (cf. Zizek's, The Sublime Object of 
Ideology).  Thus, we can have hermenutic readings of Marxist epistemology 
(i.e. Lefebvre) where the first step in a dialectical production of knowledge
is a grasp of the visible forms social relations take, to an understanding
of the relational 'content' behind the forms of the 'visible order of 
things', to an understanding of necessity of the form itself and why 
certain social relations take these forms (what Jessop terms two-step
critical realism).

Lastly, the debate on the labor theory of value has raised a few questions
in my mind.  First, I always considered the term 'exploitation' a technical
one.  Exploitation refering to the appropiation of surplus value through 
bourgoeis mechanisms.  As such I alway thought that exploitation only 
occurs in capitalist society.  While surpluss production and its appropiation
by those other than the producers occur in other modes of 
production as well, exploitation refers only the capitalist type of such 
appropiation of surplus.  For example, how do you calculate the rate of 
exploitation in a mode of production where there is no capital?  Second, 
the labour theory of value can not be trans-historical since it refers 
to exchange value, not use value.  Since exchange value presupposes money, 
it is only after the invention of money that the possibility of a 'theory 
of value' becomes possible (on exchange value, use value, the invention 
of money, and its relation to thought see: Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Intellectual 
and Manual Labour).  

Bye for now,

Peter Bratsis
Cuny Grad. Center
   


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