Re: The materialist road...

[davidmci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David McInerney)]

Phew!  Thanks for the kind words Rakesh, but all this Hegelian prose makes
my head spin!  Chris Arthur, of whom my former lecturer Ian Hunt was a
great fan, wrote a book entitled _The Dialectics of Labour_ back in 1986.
It was intended as a critique of Althusser from a Hegelian viewpoint.
Basically, and its a long time since I've been near it, he argues that
_Capital_ can only be understood in terms derived from _The Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844_, in a way similar in many respects to
Norman Geras in _Marx and Human Nature -- Refutation of a Legend_ (1983) --
which I read at the same time (1992).  Wal Suchting, for one, has rejected
the latter book -- certainly it is dubious from the Althusserian
standpoint, as it makes its points in the hermenuetical style that
Althusser rejects (see Chris B.'s discussion of Warren Montag's article on
this).  I have to agree that reading one text into another -- in the
absence of any solid supporting evidence in the later text -- is a dubious
technique.  This is especially so when one considers that Marx never wanted
the _Manuscripts_ to be published.  That said, I agree that Hegelian traces
remain in _Capital_ -- very strongly -- and this is nowhere clearer than in
Chapter 1 (a chapter that always worried Althusser), but they are present
in its entire manner of presentation and exposition, which remains strongly
formalist.  This formalism was of course reproduced in _Reading Capital_,
although Althusser's conscious anti-Hegelianism (something one could not
accuse Marx of, by any means) meant that this formalism appeared in a
quasi-structuralist guise.  As Althusser's self-criticism progressed, this
aspect of _Capital_ worried him more and more, until he openly criticised
_Capital_ as follows in 'Marxism Today".  It's too long a section to quote
in full, and apparently he presents the argument in greater detail in the
foreword to Gerard Dumenil's book, but here's a glimpse:

"In an infinitely more subtle form [than in the _German Ideology_ and the
1859 Preface-- D.M.], this same idealism haunts _Capital_ itself.  We have
learned to recognise in _Capital_'s 'mode of exposition', however
impressive, the fictive unity imposed upon it from the outset by the
requirement of beginning with the abstraction of value -- i.e. with the
homogeneity imposed upon it by the field of commensurability -- without
having previously posited capitalist relations of exploitation in the
process."

(_Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists and Other
Essays_, p. 272)

This critique is also developed further in Dominique Lecourt, 'Marx in the
Sieve of Darwin', _Rethinking MARXISM_, Vol. 5, No. 4, Winter 1992.  *By
the way, as a note to Mike Dean if you are reading this, it provides an
excellent discussion of Marx's thought on the theory of natural selection
and the theory of evolution.*

Sun, 14 Jan 1996, Rakesh wrote (BTW, Rakesh is it really Sunday in Berkley?
You aren't holidaying in Fiji or something, are you?  What's the deal?
It's Saturday 9.30pm here in Canberra.  Gee, Canberra's so exciting this
time of year, I thought I'd sit in my office writing emails on Saturday
night.  How depressing.):

>>From David whose posts have been a pleasure to read:
>
>
> > Unlike the
>>hegelian marxists and Feuerbach, who looked everywhere for a Subject (Man,
>>the proletariat) of History, Hegel and the Slovenian clique see the process
>>itself as the Subject.  They retain the notion of a Goal, but this is
>>internal to the process itself.
>
>I am wondering whether this understanding is similar to the argument that
>in demonstrating how Capital took on the properties of Hegel's Absolute
>Subject, Marx was able to demonstrate the historical specificity of
>Hegelian philosophy.
>
>For example, Patrick Murray has argued:
>
>"The idea's story of externalization parallels the dialectic by which money
>is transformed into capital: Money externalizes itself in commodities
>(means of production and labor power) and returns to itself (with a
>surplus) in the valorization process.  The logical idea externalizes itself
>in nature and (human) spirt only as a representation of itself....When
>money is transformed into capital, it is externalized into natural ojbects,
>labor power, and products of human labors on natural objects.  In so doing,
>capital posits the earth and labor power (nature and human spirit) as
>values.  At the end of the valorization process, capital returns to the
>fixated abstraction of its turning point--money.  TO THE EYES OF CAPITAL
>(my emphasis), the earth and human labor are valueless in themselves, just
>as in absolute idealism's scheme of things, "*Nature as nature...is
>senseless" (Marx).  By forgetting their sources, both the idea's course of
>externalization, which treads the logical path of the negation of the
>negation on a grand scale, and capital's cycle of negations (buying,
>selling, producing) in the process of valorization condemn themselves to a
>hellish running in spirals." (43)
>
>To this self-positing nature of capital, Tony Smith has argued that Marx is
>insisting that individuality and particularity must be developed as
>equiprimordial to universality. As Smith interprets it,  Marx is using this
>Hegelian triad to fight for the principles of subjectivity, individuality
>and personality which tend to be blotted out by capital as a
>self-reproducing totality, which Smith parenthically argues capital cannot
>attain in the long run. (31) From the  passage above, one also wonders
>whether nature could be conceptualized differently than a moment in the
>externalization of Capital.  I am not sure what the nature of nature would
>be if the principles of particularity and individuality were applied to it,
>but that is an interesting question to think about.
>
>Chris Arthur picks up on Smith's parenthetical concern to remind us that
>"Unfortunately for capital, it cannot actualize itself and conquer all its
>presuppositions of its existence as easily as Hegel's Idea is supposed to.
>The true reality is material. As a pure form, capital spins in a void. The
>logic of capital accumulation would run into the buffers pretty quickly
>were it not for the material fact that workers produce more than they
>themselves consume. Moreover, the laborers are liable to resist their
>incorporation as internal moments of capital's ideality, that its, the Idea
>of capital made real." (86)
>
>All quotes from the edited volume, Marx's Method in Capital: A
>Re-examination. Ed. Fred Moseley. NJ: Humanities Press, 1993.
>
>rakesh
>
>
>
>
>
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Mr. David McInerney,
Political Science Program, Research School of Social Sciences,
The Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., AUSTRALIA  0200.
e-mail: davidmci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; ph: (06) 249 2134; fax: (06) 249 3051




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