[Marxism] Dialectical and Historical Materialism

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Nestor,

you wrote:

But don't these "technical systems of co-ordination" include  the
forms of consciousness  that enable the co-ordination to exist, in
the first place?

Reply:

Of course they do - if you agree that human labor-power is the central
productive force, then that includes those facets of consciousness related
to the production of the means of human survival and growth.

You wrote:

But these "perspectives of future", don't they entail, in some way or
other, some kind of "philosophy of history", not of necessity a
_system_ but a general outlook?

Reply:

That is not easy to answer for me, and it depends on what you understand
history to be. I think Marx sought to grasp history as a moving totality
which connected the past, the present and the future, or at least the
potential future possibilities contained in the present. In that sense you
must be correct.

The concept of historical consciousness refers among other things to the
incorporation of the temporal dimension, of change, origins, transience and
development into the categories by which we reason: at the most basic level,
"things were not always this way, and will not always be this way".
Nevertheless you also need an anchor, a constant.

When Marx disparaged philosophy, he did so I think because he felt that the
philosophers claimed to be able to obtain knowledge by philosophical
methods, which in truth could not be obtained by philosophical methods.

In this sense, he wrote that "the philosophers have interpreted the world in
various ways, the point is to change it", or more pungently, "philosophy is
to the real world as masturbation is to sexual love."

To change the world presupposed going beyond contemplating philosophically,
transcending philosophy. But in truth I think Marx never stopped being
philosophical and reasoning philosophically. It's just that he aimed to
discipline his thinking much more by the facts of experience, i.e he sought
to generalise directly from real experience much more, rather than logically
deduce premisses via some speculative procedure.

A philosophy of history, or perspective on history, is formed post fectum,
as a generalisation from previous experience. It might help orient people to
the future, insofar as the future possibilities are conditioned or delimited
by the past.

If you accept that history is a determinate process, this means that,
whereas there are many developmental possibilities, not anything can happen
in the future, some possibilities are ruled out. So a general outlook on
history is useful in that sense I think, both to avoid skepsis and to avoid
unwarranted fantasies.

But the real question concerns how that outlook is arrived at, and what
epistemic status is attached to it. What is held to be constant, what is
variable? Previous experience entitles us to predict probable future
scenarios, but if we go beyond that experience, we enter the realm of
prophesy.

The ruling ideology of postmodernity is that history is a process beyond
human control, and that there is no trend of progress in history - all we
are humanly capable of is individual reactions to events.

I think that Marx would have said that this view is, in an overall sense,
itself a product of a specific constellation of social relations and
technologies, which makes it difficult for people to see how they could
shape events, rather than be shaped by them, i.e. perceptions of the ability
to "make history" are conditioned by social circumstances which give rise to
those perceptions.

In that sense, the relativisations which a philosophy of history might
provide could be useful, insofar as they emphasise that human agency is
capable of changing destinies, and that this has been proven in the past.

All social thought I think revolves around the twin concepts of "social
structure" (social order) and "human agency" (social change), which gives
rise to endless dualisms. The function of dialectical thought I think is
precisely to help transcend those dualisms, unlock thought paralysed by
those dualisms, and show the possibility of people to transform their
reality according to a conscious purpose.

Time to go beyond philosophy and cook some dinner...

Jurriaan




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