Re: [Marxism] Critique of critique of communism?

[Haines Brown <brownh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I am looking for a good refutation of the following argument against
> the feasibility/practicality of communism:
> 
> "Communism, defined as maximum self-realization for all individuals,
> is in itself a contradictory notion since my self-realization may
> prevent you from realizing your creative abilities. For example, my
> self-realization may depend upon the recognition of others. But such
> recognition is by its nature a positional good in the sense that not
> everybody can be equally famous."

Sayan,

To be honest, I'm not quite sure I understand the quoted passage (such
as its "positional good"?), but clearly at the heart of the matter is
what a Marxist means by "social being" in relation to self and
society.

Let me first quibble over your own question. I have to assume you
meant "Marxism" rather than "communism". The reason is that communism
is a reference to the potential for a future classless society that
arises from capitalist contradictions, and it also refers to an
organized political movement or party that engages in a revolutionary
transformation toward such a classless society. It is not a prediction
nor a utopian speculation about a hypothetical future, but is action
based on an analysis of capitalist contradictions today, and this
analysis we call "Marxism". The question makes no sense in relation to
communism, but only to Marxism.

This point is not as trivial as it may seem, for Marxists in
principle don't speculate about a hypothetical future, but pursue a
more scientific study of present capitalist contradictions. If the
quoted question were to draw us into such speculation, we would be
abandoning a scientific position, so that any answer we might offer
would be devoid of real content.

It is also important to note that a discussion of self-realization in
Marxist terms does not assume a hypothetically isolated individual on
one hand and a distinct social whole on the other. Instead there is
something that engages both and which Marxists label "social being"
(note the gerund rather than noun). To represent individual and
society as different categorical and ontological entities is an
inheritance of the Enlightenment - i.e., of bourgeois ideology.

So what then is meant by "social being"? Certainly it is not a
tendency within the individual to bond with other individuals, such as
when we say that wolves are social animals. And, of course, we don't
on the other hand reduce the individual to nothing more than a social
artifact, an expression of society. That was once a tendency in
bourgeois sociology, but it collapsed along with positivism.

So how can we define something that is at once both individual and
social? How do we reconcile unique individuality with social
determination? I believe the only way we can do this is to represent
the person as having a social being, that is as a process in which
empirical specificity of the individual represents one aspect, and a
causal relation with the social whole is another.

Process can be defined as the constraint by an empirical structure on
the probability distribution of causal potencies. That's a mouthful, I
know, but the point is that the individual uniquely actualizes social
potencies without any compromise of individuality because the social
potencies here are non-empirical, while personality is on the contrary
defined in empirical terms. 

If this be granted, then the "self-realization" of the individual is a
realization of the potency of the social whole as constrained by
individual traits. The human has very limited genetic or biological
capacities, and what really counts are the capacities we acquire
though our social relations. But each of use actualizes these social
potentials in our own unique way (cultural anthropology is a study of
this individually creative, critically selective, adoption of socially
transmitted potentials).

In short, you can't actualize your self, your personality, your
creative juices, without drawing upon social potencies, but that
actualization is constrained by your individuality. One's self is a
combination of a variety of factors that influence your empirical
character, such as ethnic identity, social location, parental
influence, genetic disposition, etc. There is no contradiction between
self and society, for when social being is understood as a process, as
a relation of empirical constraint upon causal potencies, they are
seen as interdependent and mutually supportive.

Haines Brown



   

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