"ambivalence" versus dialectics (from PEN-L)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Yates wrote to Doug:

>Do you think that to say,as Marx did, that capitalism gives us " a
>presentiment that such productive forces slumber[...] in the breast of
>social labor" that he is being ambivalent about capitalism? I don't
>think this is the right word. Saying that capitalism helps to show us
>the way to abundant production does not imply ambivalence.  If anything,
>capitalism's absolute inability to fulfill this possibility (see Kofi
>Annan's fact sheet) might well lead people, as it surely did Marx, to
>oppose capitalism with one's whole being.

I think that Doug is confusing dialectics with ambivalence.  To think
dialectically is not the same as to think ambivalently.  Dialectics (for
Marxists) implies a political objective of moving toward an emancipated
future, and *only from a dialectical standpoint,* sufferings of the past
can be regarded as what dialectically produced the possibilities of the
present, that is to say, the possibilities of emancipating ourselves from
capitalism and making rational use of powers (scientific or otherwise)
developed under it.  Ambivalence, in contrast to dialectics, is stuck in
the present, with cries of No Future stamped on its brow.  Ambivalence, as
defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, means "the coexistence in one
person of contradictory emotions or attitudes (as love and hatred) towards
a person or thing."  The word is psychological, and the following example
from the OED sums up why the word doesn't describe how Marx saw capitalism:
"1913 Amer. Jrnl. Insanity 880 This ambivalency leads, even with normal
people, to difficulties of decision and to inner conflict."  Doug may be
ambivalent toward capitalism & possibilities of socialism, but Marx sure
wasn't.

BTW, one of the virtues that Marx saw in capitalism is this: "All fixed,
fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices
and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before
they can ossify.  All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is
profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real
conditions of life, and his relations with his kind" (_The Communist
Manifesto_).  Unlike Marx, however, many of our contemporary leftists cling
to ancient and new-formed prejudices and opinions (e.g. Plato, Kant, Hegel,
Weber, Freud, Keynes, etc. and postmodern reworkings of their ideas) as if
there were no better tomorrow.  Tragic indeed.

Yoshie


Louis Proyect
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