Re: K vs. M

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

James Devine wrote:

> this quote is from before the "Theses on Feuerbach" or THE GERMAN  
> IDEOLOGY. It's before Marx broke with the "Young Hegelians" and  
> clarified his materialism. It thus doesn't seem relevant.

>   
>
> > Our programme must be: the reform of consciousness not through dogmas
> > but by analyzing mystical consciousness obscure to itself, whether it
> > appear in religious or political form. It will then become plain that
> > the world has long since dreamed of something of which it needs only
> > to become conscious for it to possess it in reality. It will then
> > become plain that our task is not to draw a sharp mental line between
> > past and future, but to complete the thought of the past. Lastly, it
> > will becomes plain that mankind will not be doing any new work, but
> > will consciously bring about the completion of its old work.
> >  
> <http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm>
As the passages such as those I pointed out to Ken demonstrate, the  
idea that the full actualization of the "true realm of freedom"  
requires the full development of rational self-consciousness both for  
its creation and for life within it and that this involves the analysis  
and dissolution of "mystical consciousness obscure to itself" and the  
associated becoming conscious and actualization of "something" which  
mankind "has long dreamed of"  isn't subsequently rejected.

The key form of mystical consciousness requiring dissolution is the  
fetishism of the material base i.e. the form of mystical consciousness  
in which "the social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force,  
which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is  
determined by the division of labour" appears to individuals "as an  
alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they  
are ignorant, which they thus cannot control, which on the contrary  
passes through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of  
the will and the action of man, nay even being the prime governor of  
these."  
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ 
ch01a.htm#a2>

This is "the inversion of subject into object and vice versa."  As in  
Hegel, this inversion (alienation) and its overcoming is a necessary  
stage in the full development of rational self-consciousness,

"Hence the rule of the capitalist over the worker is the rule of things  
over man, of dead labour over the living, of the product over the  
producer. For the commodities that become the instruments of rule over  
the workers (merely as the instruments of the rule of capital itself)  
are mere consequences of the process of production; they are its  
products. Thus at the level of material production, of the life-process  
in the realm of the social - for that is what the process of production  
is - we find the same situation that we find in religion at the  
ideological level, namely the inversion of subject into object and vice  
versa. Viewed historically this inversion is the indispensable  
transition without which wealth as such, i.e. the relentless productive  
forces of social labour, which alone can form the material base of a  
free human society, could not possibly be created by force at the  
expense of the majority. This antagonistic stage cannot be avoided, any  
more than it is possible for man to avoid the stage in which his  
spiritual energies are given a religious definition as powers  
independent of himself. What we are confronted by here is the  
alienation [Entfremdung] of man from his own labour." ("Results of the  
Immediate Process of Production" in Capital, vol. 1 [Penguin ed.], p.  
990)

In the "true realm of freedom" the material base is the product of the  
"conscious knowing and willing" of "universally developed    
individuals" i.e. of rational self-consciousness.

“It has been said and may be said that this [‘the way in which their  
own exchange and their own production confront individuals as an  
objective relation which is independent of them’] is precisely the  
beauty and the greatness of it [‘the world market’]: this spontaneous  
interconnection, this material and mental metabolism which is  
independent of the knowing and willing of individuals, and which  
presupposes their reciprocal independence and indifference. And,  
certainly, this objective connection is preferable to the lack of any  
connection, or to a merely local connection resting on blood ties, or  
on primeval, natural or master-servant relations. Equally certain is it  
that individuals cannot gain mastery over their own social  
interconnections before they have created them. But it is an insipid  
notion to conceive of this merely objective bond as a spontaneous,  
natural attribute inherent in individuals and inseparable from their  
nature (in antithesis to their conscious knowing and willing). This  
bond is their product. It is a historic product. It belongs to a  
specific phase of their development. The alien and independent  
character in which It presently exists vis-à-vis individuals proves  
only that the latter are still engaged in the creation of the  
conditions of their social life, and that have not yet begun, on the  
basis of these conditions, to live it. It is the bond natural to  
individuals within specific and limited relations of production.  
Universally developed individuals, whose social relations, as their own  
communal [gemeinschaftlich] relations, are hence also subordinated to  
their own communal control, are no product of nature, but of history.  
The degree and the universality of the development of wealth where this  
individuality becomes possible supposes production on the basis of  
exchange values as a prior condition, whose universality produces not  
only the alienation of the individual from himself and from others, but  
also the universality and the comprehensiveness of his relations and  
capacities.” (Marx, Grundrisse, pp. 161-2)

The form of "materialism" that excludes any role for "conscious knowing  
and willing" in human history isn't Marx's. He rejects it as "a crude  
material fetishism ... where not only the difference between man and  
animal disappears but even the difference between a living organism and  
an inanimate object."

Ted