There is however one thing of
fundamental importance for the
methodology of economics which he [Marx] actually achieved. Economists
always have either themselves done work in economic history or else used the
historical work of others. But the facts of economic history were assigned to a
separate compartment. They entered theory, if at all, merely in the role of
illustrations, or possibly of verifications of results. They mixed with it only mechanically.
Now Marx’s mixture is a chemical
one; that is to say, he introduced them into the very argument that
produces the results. He was the first economist of top rank to see and to
teach systematically how economic theory may be turned into historical analysis
and how the historical narrative may be turned into histoire raisonnee. (J. Schumpeter, CS&D, p.44)
The
reason why Marx is able “to introduce the
facts of economic history into the very argument that produces the results”
cannot be due to any “methodology of
economics” because there is no such thing as a “methodology of economics”
just as there is no “methodology of science”. What characterizes scientific
studies is not an identifiable “methodology” but rather a human praxis that first identifies a desirable
outcome and then sets out to apply existing knowledge to achieve it and, in the
practical process of doing so, may or may not come out with that desirable
outcome or other serendipitous outcomes. Each particular scientific experiment is sui generis – it is an “experience” - and there is no way of
abstracting from individual experiments to a broader “methodology” for the
simple reason that no “method” will ever be capable of being scientifically or
logically connected to the predictable
(rather than “causal”) relation that is ultimately found between events.
If
we define “theory” as a series of abstract rules that connect facts in a
predictive or apodictic relation by means of experiments, then it is obvious
that no “theory” will ever be able to achieve such a relation by means of a
“method” because each experiment is, by definition, a unique “experience” whose
outcome cannot be “formalised” in isolation from the actual experience.
Furthermore, for what concerns the connection of theory with facts, whether in
the physical or in the social sciences, first, the selection of “facts” is
itself arbitrary from a “theoretical” viewpoint in that it is the “theory” that
selects the “facts”, which means that the theory itself must be “arbitrary”
from an “objective theoretical” or “scientific” viewpoint”! (Cf. Windelband,
“Thus, in the scientific sense, ‘fact’
is already a teleological concept,” [History and Natural Science, p.181]. We
do not share, of course, the artificial dichotomy of the Marburg School of
neo-Kantian philosophers between “natural sciences” [Natur-wissenschaften] and “social sciences” [Geistes-wissenschaften]). And second, no amount of theorizing will
ever be able to establish any “causal links” between “facts” independently of
the human interest involved in
isolating a particular “chain of causality” among an infinity of other “causal
chains” (the point was first established by Nietzsche from as early as Uber Wahrheit und Luge, and then
elaborated by Weber [cf. his Objektivitat]).
After Nietzsche, we ought to know that there is no ordo et connexio rerum et idearum; after Heidegger, we know that
there is no adaequatio rei et intellectus.
So, it is certainly
not because of a superior “methodology of
economics” that Marxian social theory presents this “chemical” fusion of fact and theory (or hypothesis) against the “mechanical” incongruence of bourgeois
economic theory. But why, then, does Schumpeter believe that when it comes to
the analysis of capitalist industry and society “Marx’s mixture [of facts and theory] is a chemical one” whereas
that of orthodox bourgeois economics is only “mechanical”? To find out the
answer, let us look at it in reverse, that is to say, let us see why it is that
bourgeois economic theory has no need for “facts” to support it, and then we
will be able to deduce at least negatively what we must not do if we do not
wish social theory to be entirely detached from reality.
If we take human
beings as isolated individuals and we then ascribe to them “self-interests”
that are insatiable and also absolutely incommunicable and incommensurable with
one another, and if we then assume that they initially “possess” given
“endowments” which they are only able “to exchange” with one another – then it
is entirely obvious that we will be able to come up with a “science of
exchange” (Walras’s equilibrium or Hayek’s catallactics
or Mises’s praxeology) that will be
the exact replica of Newtonian mechanics in which there is either a unique
solution (Walrasian equilibrium) or else an ex
post facto rationalization (Hayek, Mises) for all the possible “exchange
ratios” between all such individuals and for the optimal distribution of their
original endowments to maximize their individual self-interests.
In order to protect
its claimed “scientific status”, bourgeois economic theory must separate itself
from the social and physical environment in which it operates – all the more so
because it needs to present its findings as immutable laws of human nature. The peculiarity of this “economic theory” or
“economic science” is that it contains no
history! No historical or
sociological facts are needed for this “science” because “history” is the
record of metabolic interaction of human beings not merely inter se, between themselves as individuals or groups, but also and
above all with their physical environment, which is how they pro-duce their needs and in so doing
create and develop new ones, while all the time they transform also their
interpersonal relations in the process.
In sharp contrast,
there is no metabolic interaction between the “atomistic individuals” of
orthodox bourgeois economic theory because there is no pro-duction of needs on the part of these atomistic individuals but
only the simple pure “exchange” of “given” endowments – an “exchange” that
“exists” only as a logico-mathematical equation and deduction and never
involves any historical interaction
between these individuals. There is no historical
change in neoclassical economic exchange:
there is no history in such pure exchange. As Lucio Colletti put it,
in this type of social and economic theory,
[t]he relation between the
theory and its object contracts, due to the ideal character of the latter, into
a mere relation of idea to idea, an internal monologue within thought itself.
The object of analysis thus slips through our fingers; it is, as Lenin pointed
out [in What are ‘Friends of the People’],
impossible for us to undertake any study of the facts, of social processes,
precisely because we are no longer confronting a society, a real object, but
only the idea of society, society in general…. in the place of concrete
historical phenomena it has interpolated the idea; in the place of a concrete,
determinate society it has substituted society ‘in general’? (Ideology and Society, pp3-4).
But Colletti
here mixes up two separate matters: the first, which is the more relevant, is
that bourgeois social theory reduces human society to abstract ideas and ceases
to treat it as a “living” organism,
that is to say, one that mutates and evolves physio-logically, with the emphasis on the physicality of human needs: it is this immanent materialism – this
stress on the metabolic production of human needs that are ever-changing -
which leads to the requirement of the “concreteness” of historical analysis. But
then Colletti jumps immediately to the bourgeois dichotomy of concreteness
versus generality without specifying in what way the Marxian approach is more
“concrete” except to state that it studies this particular “society” – capitalism
- when in fact the relevant issue is that it is the abstraction from how human
needs are satisfied and pro-duced that makes the “generality” of bourgeois
social theory and “science” problematic because it invariably seeks to justify
the status quo and its social exploitation by hypostatising it into “human
nature”. Not the “generality” of
bourgeois science is the real problem: the real problem is that it turns the
established order of exploitation into an eternal truth!
“History” is not
merely the historia rerum gestarum
(the record of personal or institutional actions) but rather it is the record
of how human beings interact with one another and with their physical
environment: history is the record of human metabolic
pro-duction. History is the record of how human beings interact to fulfil
and satisfy their changing needs by meta-bolically interacting with their
physical environment. It is this “metabolic interaction” that forms the content
of “history”. History is not just the record of human relations; it is the record
of social relations “of pro-duction” because not just the distribution of the
product but above what is pro-duced
and how it is pro-duced are essential
to understanding human “history”! It is this immanentism that we are seeking to expound here by way of a
critique of Schumpeter’s work so as to overcome the old antinomic dualism of
materialism and idealism.
But in this
pro-duction of their needs, as a discrete albeit dependent aspect of it, the
question arises of how human beings may organize in such a manner that some
exploit others in the sense that the living activity of a section or class of
human society is subordinated by another section or class. In capitalism the
specific form of subordination relates to the “exchange” of dead labour with living labour, and specifically to the reality that such “exchange”
can occur only through political violence because no “exchange” of living with
dead labour could take place without such violence. As we shall demonstrate
later in our discussion of the labour theory of value outlined by Marx in Zur Kritik, the problem with capitalism
is not that the concrete living activity of human beings is reduced to or
reified into abstract labour through the forced separation of workers from the
means of production – because no such “reduction” or “reification” is possible
given that all human activity, however violently enforced or alienated, remains
living activity. The problem is instead that living activity is violently made exchangeable and
therefore commensurate with dead
labour, with the product of living labour, by means of that violent separation.
In other words, the “exchange” has no “objective” or “market” basis except the
violent institutional organization of human living activity on the part of
capitalists.
It is over this
discrete, distinct reality of conflict and antagonism in the process of human
metabolic production of their needs that the dialectical method can be applied to assess the validity of
socio-theoretical accounts of this antagonism. The peculiarity of the dialectical method, even and especially in its pre-Socratic
origins, is that it is a “negative” procedure that does not seek to establish
“the truth” – as if “the truth”, as an absolute reality, ec-sisted! For if it
did, there would be no need for the very concept of “truth”, as Nietzsche
established as early as “Lies and Truth”. Rather, dialectics seeks to establish
a “dialogue” (whence “dialectics”) between opposing sides onto a common ground
(the polemos, or dispute) from which
the dispute may be “resolved” or better “super-seded” (cf. Giorgio Colli, La Nascita della Filosofia). Dialectics
is not a “positive” method but is rather one that applies in a negative and
critical manner to aporetic concepts that hypostatise or reify human reality as
well as to their underlying reality - as is evinced by Hegel’s emphasis on “the
negation of the negation” instead of, as is commonly and erroneously believed,
the “triadic” sequence thesis-antithesis-synthesis. (Cf. on this Norberto
Bobbio’s instructive Studi Hegeliani
and Theodore Adorno’s Introduction to Negative
Dialectics, which is characteristically opaque but highlights this
“critical” role of the Hegelian method.)
Both formal
logic and dialectics rely on the notion of contradiction – but the application
of this notion is what distinguishes the two methods. Both formal logic and
dialectics can be applied negatively to assess the validity of statements about physical events and entities - which
are either true or false at a particular point in time - but not to the individual
physical events or quantifiable entities themselves – which are neither true nor
false at any point in time. But unlike formal logic, although it cannot be
applied to scientific findings, dialectics can be applied to statements about all
human activity as well as to the activity itself, including scientific inquiry,
if this
activity can be shown to contain antagonistic
motives and interests. The
“findings” of scientific activity may be disputed on the evidence but not on
the “logic” of the events that are the object of scientific inquiry: events are
never “contradictory”, but statements and conclusions or “findings” about them
can be. To repeat, both dialectics and logic can be applied to statements about
human activity and events; but dialectics applies also to human and scientific activity that may be said to be
antagonistic (for example, research into a harmful product or research that is
itself harmful).
As a corollary
to the first restriction or qualification – the condition that it apply negatively to statements, just like
formal logic -, the second requirement for dialectics is that it be applied
negatively to assess the validity of both
human activities and statements
concerning human activities that contain
antagonism or conflicts of interests. This does not extend to formal logic
which can apply only negatively to statements - to assess their validity, not their truth! - but cannot apply to human activities themselves.
Thus, what
distinguishes dialectics from formal logic is the interpretation of the notion
of “contra-diction”. To the extent that human activities and statements and
concepts about them contain antagonism they may be said to be dialectically but not logically “contra-dictory”. Whereas contradiction in formal logic can
apply only to statements in the sense that they are either valid or invalid,
dialectical contradiction applies to statements and concepts concerning human
activities as well as to the activities
themselves to the extent that they are antagonistic in that their purpose
or aims are harmful to some humans and that therefore this antagonism must be
resolved and superseded historically
because it cannot remain “eternal” or be theo-onto-logical.
The
dialectical method is founded on the practical notion that antagonism can be
resolved through its elimination by the opposition or antithesis it contains, in the triple sense that it entails the antithesis, that it generates it materially and that it
seeks to prevent the antagonism of
the antithesis from destroying it materially! Hence, whereas the contradiction
of formal logic serves simply to negate a statement that is contra-dictory but
cannot resolve the contradiction historically, dialectics moves beyond
contradictory statements and activities by negating the antagonism they
contain, that is, by showing how this antagonism must be resolved historically
by the negation (the negation of the negation) of both the source of the
antagonism (the thesis) and of the opposition (the antithesis) to which it
gives rise and that is contained in and
by the source. Like dialectics,
formal logic cannot be applied to events but only to statements; but unlike dialectics, formal logic cannot be applied
to human activities and hypotheses thereof that contain antagonism because
these cannot be “contradictory” in a formal sense but can be so only dialectically, that is to say, historically.
Precisely on
this point, Hegel’s greatest intuition was the notion of Auf-hebung, which rests on the resolution and supersession of human
antagonism and conflict rather than on their irreconcilability. Perhaps the grandest and noblest instance of the
dialectical method at work is Hegel’s chapter on “Lordship and Servitude” (or
“Master and Slave”) in his earliest theoretical work, the Phenomenology of Mind. The fact that Hegel was wrong about
interpreting supersession as the “reconciliation” (Versohnung) of antagonism – that is to say, the “triadic” notion of
the “syn-thesis” of thesis and antithesis - rather than as “the negation of the
negation” of the source of antagonism, the “thesis”, is a separate matter that
we shall discuss later in connection with Gramsci’s interpretation of the
dialectic. Indeed, as Adorno
has contended, the hypostatisation of dialectical concepts – their
“positivity”, “immutability” or “closedness” - is a flaw that afflicts also
Hegel’s “phenomenology” or “objective idealism”, despite its undoubtedly
revolutionary role in inspiring the later development of the dialectical method
as a critical tool by Marx:
This, then, is the model of
that positive negativity: the negation of
the negation as a new positive that appears in Hegelian philosophy as a new
model. Incidentally, it should be pointed out that one of the very striking
features of Hegel's philosophy, one whose significance has not been
sufficiently appreciated, is its dynamic
nature. By this I mean that it does not regard its categories as fixed, but
instead thinks of them as having emerged
historically and therefore as capable
of change. Even so, in reality its conceptual apparatus contains much more
that is immutable, incomparably more
that is constant, than it lets on.
And these constants come to the surface to a certain degree against the
intentions of this philosophy…. (Adorno,
Lectures on Negative Dialectics, p.15)
For it is precisely this
'having something', having it as something fixed, given and unquestioned on
which one can comfortably rely - it is this that thought should actually
resist. And the very thing that appears as a flaw in a philosophy that does not
have this quality is in truth the medium in which philosophical ideas that are worthy
of the name can thrive….[Adorno, Lectures,
p.25]
(Adorno’s
Introduction to Negative Dialectics
superbly describes the need for the dialectical method to embrace “the object”
materially, as history, as physis –
in other words, to include that metabolic
interaction that is our focus in this work. This is a point that
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of
Perception and the rest of his work – cf. the English collection The Merleau-Ponty Reader – highlights
masterfully. Heidegger elaborates punctiliously the notion of “physis” in “The
Concept and Essence of ‘Physis’ in Aristotle”, reprinted in Pathmarks. His vice, as always, is that,
unlike Nietzsche and Marx, his emphasis is on the physio-logical rather than on the physio-logical
– on transcendence rather than immanence. For a critique, see chapter on “The
Ontological Need” in Adorno’s Negative
Dialectics. See also our discussion of Colletti just below and our “The
Philosophy of the Flesh” on scribd.com.)
Colletti on Kant’s distinction between “Real Opposition”
and “Dialectical Contradiction”
For the sake of illustrating our
interpretation of the dialectical method, let us turn to an interesting and
compendious review of “Marxism and the Dialectic” by the illustrious and
erudite Italian philosopher Lucio Colletti.
I shall attempt to clarify
somewhat a question…—although one that is very difficult to deal with briefly:
the problem of the difference between ‘real opposition’ (Kant’s Realopposition
or Realrepugnanz) and ‘dialectical contradiction’. Both are instances of
opposition, but they are radically distinct in kind. ‘Real opposition’ (or
‘contrariety’ of incompatible opposites) is an opposition ‘without
contradiction’ (ohne Widerspruch). It does not violate the principles of
identity and (non)- contradiction, and hence is compatible with formal logic.
The second form of opposition, on the contrary, is ‘contradictory’ (durch
den Widerspruch) and gives rise to a dialectical opposition. Marxists, as
we shall see, have never entertained clear ideas on this subject. In the
overwhelming majority of cases they have not even suspected that there were two
oppositions and that they were radically different in nature. In the rare
cases where this fact has been noted, its significance has been misunderstood,
and ‘real opposition’ has also been considered as [4] an example and an
instance of the dialectic, even though it was a ‘noncontradictory’, and hence
undialectical, opposition. (“Marxism and the Dialectic”, pp.3-4)
We agree that
“contradiction” in dialectics cannot apply to all real events simply on the
basis that they display some form of conflict or “real opposition”, as Colletti
calls it. In the case of two opposing forces, for instance, or colliding
objects, it is quite absurd to speak of “contradiction” because neither the forces
nor the objects are “saying” or “meaning” anything. Therefore, for such
“contrarieties”, as Colletti also defines them, neither formal logic (which
applies only to statements in any case, something Colletti totally overlooks
above) nor dialectics (which applies to “contra-dictions” in the broader
antagonistic sense) can even remotely apply. The problem with Colletti’s
erudite analysis of the dialectic, however, arises when he tries to define what
kind of events or entities or activities qualify for “real opposition”, to
which the dialectic does not apply. Here is Colletti again:
Let us sum up. Conflicts
between forces in nature and in reality, for example attraction/repulsion in
Newtonian physics, struggles between counterposed tendencies, contrasts between
opposing forces—all these not only do not undermine the principle of
(non)-contradiction, but on the contrary confirm it. What we are dealing with
in fact is oppositions which, precisely because they are real, are
‘devoid of contradiction’ and hence have nothing to do with dialectical
contradiction. The poles of these oppositions, to go back to Marx, ‘cannot
mediate each other’ nor ‘do they have any need of mediation’: ‘they have
nothing in common with each other, they do not need each other, nor are they
integrated with each other’, (ibidem,
p.9).
It is very simple
to find the fatal flaw in Colletti’s argument here – quite surprising, really,
in a thinker of his depth and breadth. The flaw is in equating “forces in
nature” (what we call physical events and quantifiable entities) and “conflicts
in reality” which can include social antagonism. It is to this social
antagonism that the notion of “dialectical contradiction” applies, as we have
explained above. Colletti makes the gargantuan fallacy of equating “opposing
forces” in the physical sense and “social conflict” in the antagonistic sense
under the common banner of “real opposition” or “conflicts between forces in
nature and in reality”. But the “real opposition” of social conflict is not the
same as the “real opposition” of physical collision between forces and objects!
(Colletti is confusing political “opposition” with physical “opposition”,
conflict with contrast.) We agree with Colletti that dialectical contradictions
most assuredly do not apply to the latter – and formal logical contradiction
applies to neither because it applies only to statements: but there can be no
doubt that dialectical contradiction does apply to the former, to social
conflict and antagonism, because that is the real valid meaning of “dialectical
contradiction”! As we explained above, social conflict and antagonism is
“dialectically contra-dictory” because it cannot be eternal or ontological and
must be capable of resolution and supersession.
When Colletti
asserts – directly quoting Marx from the Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, but quite ferociously out of context - that
the “opposing forces” in social conflict “have
nothing in common with each other, they do not need each other, nor are they
integrated with each other”, he cannot be in his right mind – because if
conflicting human interests had “nothing in common with each other” – well then
there would be no conflict between them! If they did not “need each other” or
were not “integrated with each other”, then as sure as night follows day the
master would not need the slave and the capitalist would not need the worker! Once
again, these lapses are quite unworthy of Colletti – a Marxist theoretician
whom we are fond of quoting and citing – and we are using them purely for
illustrative purposes.
2
Care must be taken,
then, to remember that the dialectical
method may be applied only to historically antagonistic relations: - only
to concepts that apply to historical realities that contain antagonism that explodes the concepts, which cannot be
contained by them although it is contained
in them, and that leads to the supersession of the historical reality
described by the concepts. The dialectical method does apply to concepts as
concepts if they define an object whose practical implementation entails
exploitation and generates social antagonism. For example, the notion of
“competition”, as we discussed earlier in our study, contains the notion of
monopoly (the aim of competition is to eliminate all other competitors) and
therefore social antagonism. This means that the extrinsication of competition
– its practical historical unfolding – will lead to its negation – monopoly.
But “monopoly” still contains in itself the historical antagonism that brought
about the original state of “competition”. It is not until this original state
of competition is entirely destroyed and obliterated by the negation of the
negation that competition is finally abolished or superseded. But this
supersession of competition is not a reality that “must” occur because it
somehow “contains” a dialectical contradiction! All it may be said is that it
contains “antagonism”: but whether or not this antagonism results in a specific
historical development is something that no “dialectical method” can
“positively” predict!
Adorno uses the
example of “concept” and “object” which – like those of “nature” and “society”,
“nature” and “history”, “body” and “mind” - are not dialectical but are
ontological and subject only either to formalism (antinomies, apories as in
Kant) or to “reciprocal action” (organic totality). These concepts give rise
either to formalism (Platonic, Kantian, with its chorismos) or to the notion of “organic totality” (a methexis seen only as ahistorical “organic
totality”) both of which are hypostases, static and immutable concepts, and are
therefore amenable to dialectical critique which unmasks their “separation”,
their chorismos, and reminds us that
the two “opposites” are so only because they are not applied metabolically and
historically and therefore immanently
– we could say, “concretely” - and are instead exasperated as antinomic
dichotomies. Seen formalistically or reciprocally there appears to be no
dialectical relation between them;
but once we examine the content of
each concept and seek to apply it historically we find its opposite is already
contained in it. Only when these concepts are applied historically and
metabolically can they contain actual antagonism and in this sense contain also
a contra-diction amenable to
dialectical critique. So long as we consider the concepts of economics and
sociology, of nature and society or of body and mind, there is no contradiction
except for the fact that they are hypostatic and aporetic – they are antinomic.
It is only once we apply them to historical situations that they become antagonistic in their “use”, as a matter
of praxis, and then their contra-diction comes to the fore.
This is what Adorno
hints at in this passage in which the historical metabolic dimension is
specified by reference to “the confrontation of concepts with objects”:
Instead,
the negativity I am speaking about contains a pointer to what Hegel calls determinate negation. In other words,
negativity of this kind is made concrete
[historical and metabolic] and goes beyond mere standpoint philosophy [formalism, organicism] by confronting
concepts with their [historical] objects and, conversely, objects with their
concepts, (Adorno, Lectures, p.25).
The obvious
danger in treating dialectics as a “positive method” for predicting
“scientifically” the course of history and even of “nature” is that it will
then be mistaken for a “positive science” that can explain events as occurring
in accordance with its own “logic” or “laws” in the way that Engels did in the Anti-Duhring and in The Dialectics of Nature. The danger is that the dialectical method
is abused to lay claim to a view of human praxis, of “history”, and of human
“society” as if it represented a “totality”, “one indivisible whole” or an “organism”
whereby the behaviour of individual members of this “organic totality” may be
predicted by reference to the “organic totality”. This is a pitfall that
tempted not just Hegel with his notion that “the whole is greater than its
parts”, but also Marx in his insistence on regarding the capitalist process of
production “as a whole” (see the title to Volume 3 of Capital) in an effort to reconcile individual labour values with
market prices (a flaw exposed by Bohm-Bawerk in “Karl Marx and the ‘Close’ of
His System”). If an entity is defined in terms of a “totality”, it is clear
that the interaction of the entities making up that “totality” will have to be
in “harmony” with it – which can never prove the consistency of the definition
because it only serves to expose the tautology of this “closed” system.
The notion of “totality” will play the most
prominent role in all social theory around the turn of the century as an
attempt to overcome the dichotomy or separation of Subject and Object
formalised for modern metaphysics by Descartes with his distinction of res cogitans (soul) and res extensa (body). Of course, in our
classification, this is a “reciprocal action” whose comprehension leads to the
notion of “organic totality”. The way out of this seemingly insuperable
opposition – antinomy, apory, dichotomy – between Subject and Object is quite
obviously through its “historicisation”, in the manner indicated by Hegel and
then Lukacs, that is, through the category of “labour” which is the “action”
that intervenes to mediate and historicise the “fixedness” of Subject an
Object. But this “history” cannot be comprehended ideally or conceptually by
means of “the dialectical method” – which is the delusion that Lukacs fell into
in HCC. As we have seen, the
dialectical method is not a positive tool for predicting the future or guiding
praxis, but it is instead a purely negative critical tool. Lukacs’s Hegelian
privileging of the proletariat as “the identical subject-object of history” has
three sources: Schopenhauer’s critique of Kant, Hegel’s dialectical idealism, and
Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach
(especially the first, see p.186ff of HCC
where Feuerbach’s materialism is discussed explicitly in this context.
Interestingly,
those philosophers for whom there is an unbridgeable hiatus or “separation”
(Plato’s chorismos) between (good)
ideal and (bad) reality (or mere appearances [bad] and the real world [good])
are those who seek the social synthesis – the methexis – but purely as an “ideal”; whereas those who identify
reality and appearance (take the good with the bad) are those who stress the
impossibility of “ideals” and the ineluctable divergence of human needs, the inevitability and inexorability of antagonism – existence as it is, esse est percipi. (Cf. Adorno, “Essence
and Appearance”, Negative Dialectics,
p.166, on Nietzsche. Of course, the classic statement against the “idealists”
or “rationalists” from Plato to Hegel and Marx is in K. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies.)
Dialectics cannot
be used as a positive method to
determine or to predict human historical events: it can only be used negatively
as a critical tool to assess the
historical validity of a given socio-theoretical hypothesis in terms of the
tendency of a given antagonistic historical reality or human activity. In a
nutshell, the dialectical method may be dissected into three principles, as
Engels did in Dialectics of Nature and
in Anti-Duhring. The first principle,
which says that quantitative increments lead to qualitative change, is a
banality when it is not a tautology (incidentally, Schumpeter uses this
approach at pp.220ff of Business Cycles to
describe “innovations”, although he too points out the simplicity of this
distinction).
The second is the principle of “reciprocal action” –
which means that when two factors are in opposition, they interact with each
other. Hence, it is incorrect to say that “nature” is what conditions “human
beings”, or the opposite, because clearly the two must interact – indeed it is
not possible to conceive of human beings without “nature” and even vice versa
because the concept of “nature” implies a “non-nature” which is clearly human
being. This principle is analytically valid because it serves to distinguish
for analytical purposes between different factors of human reality, but it is
historically inapplicable if it is considered purely from the standpoint of
ontological analysis, because then its conceptual framework becomes thoroughly
ahistorical and indeed as banal as the first component of the dialectical
method! Any historical and socio-theoretical analysis that identifies conflicts
that cannot be resolved turns quite evidently into an ahistorical hypostasis; in other words, it turns a
problem of human agency into an ontological entity.
This is why only the third principle of the
Hegelian-Marxian dialectical method, the
principle of “the negation of the negation”, is valid both for analytical
and historical purposes – because it reminds us that all analyses of
antithetical and conflicting historical concepts must include at the very least
the possibility of the historical resolution, of the over-coming and the
super-session of any antagonism and conflict that may be the object of that
historical or socio-theoretical analysis. The problem
with interpreting the dialectic in the sequence thesis-antithesis-synthesis is quite simply that here the “syn-thesis” is meant to preserve both
the thesis and the anti-thesis. Yet, as Gramsci vehemently argued, the
antithesis does not preserve but
rather it first negates and then dissolves (Auf-heben) the thesis – which is why Hegel and Marx preferred to
speak of “the negation of the negation”
(in which no part of the thesis is preserved, precisely because it is “negated”
by the anti-thesis) as the supersession
of the conflict between thesis and antithesis. Here the moment of antithesis,
the antagonism as negation, must contain (hold and refrain at the same time,
see Cacciari, Il Potere che Frena on
this notion of catechon,
“containment”) the moment of supersession of the antagonism – the negation of
the negation.
Bobbio on Marxian
dialectics:
Di fronte a due enti in contrasto, il metodo della
com-[256]
penetrazione degli opposti, o meglio dell'azione reciproca,
conduce a mantenere entrambi i termini del contrasto e
a
considerarli come condizionantisi a vicenda; al
contrario, il
metodo della negazione
della negazione conduce a considerare
il primo
eliminato in un primo tempo dal secondo, e il
secondo
eliminato in un secondo momento da un terzo termine.
Il primo metodo viene applicato a eventi simultanei, il
secondo, a eventi che si dispiegano nel tempo: perciò
quest'ultimo
è un metodo per la comprensione della storia (vuoi
della
storia della natura, vuoi della storia dell'uomo),
(pp.255-6)
…
Lo strumento di questa comprensione unitaria era
la [261]
dialettica come rilevazione delle opposizioni e loro
risoluzione.
Solo che la unità concreta nello studio dello svolgimento
storico gli era apparsa come il risultato della sintesi
degli opposti (negazione della negazione), donde la categoria
del corso storico dell'umanità è il divenire;
nello studio
scientifico della realtà , l'unità concreta gli apparve
come il
risultato di una interrelazione degli enti che
l'intelletto
astratto ha erroneamente isolati gli uni dagli altri (
azione
reciproca ) , donde la categoria unitaria della totalità organica.
Come il divenire è composto di diversi momenti in opposizione,
così la totalità organica è composta di diversi
enti
in
opposizione. La dialettica, come metodo di risoluzione
delle
opposizioni, si presenta là come sintesi
degli opposti,
qua come azione reciproca. Il divenire, in altre parole, è il
risultato di
successive negazioni, o se si vuole di un continuo
superamento (
il terzo termine ) ; la totalitÃ
organica è il
risultato di
un intrecciarsi delle reciproche relazioni degli
enti, o, se si
vuole, di una integrazione ( che non
risolve i due termini in un terzo ), (Da Hobbes a
Marx, pp.260-1).
In the face of two
contrasting entities, the
method of com-[256]
penetration of
opposites, or better
of reciprocal action, leads
to maintain both
terms of the contrast
and to consider
them as conditions
to each other;
Conversely, the negation
method leads to
considering the
first one eliminated at
first by the second, and
the second eliminated
at a later
time by a third
term. The first
method is applied
to simultaneous events, the
second, to events
unfolding over time: Therefore
the latter is a method
for understanding the history
(either
of the history of
nature, or of
the history of man), (pp. 255-6)...
The instrument of
this unitary understanding
was [261] the dialectic
as detection of
oppositions and
their resolution. Only
that the concrete unit in the study
of the historical unfolding
had appeared to him
[Marx] as the
result of the synthesis
of opposites (negation of the negation), whence the
category of the historical
course of mankind
is the becoming; whereas
in the scientific study
of reality, the
concrete unit appeared
to him as the
result of an
interrelation of
the entities that the
abstract intellect wrongly
isolated from each
other (reciprocal action), whence the
unitary category of
the organic totality. As
the becoming is
composed of different
moments in opposition, so
the whole organic
is composed of
different entities in
opposition. The dialectic, as
a method of resolving the
oppositions, presents itself
there as a
synthesis of opposite, here
as reciprocal action. The
becoming, in other
words, is the
result of successive
negations, or
if one wants
of a continuous
overcoming (the third
term);
instead, the organic
totality is the
result of the
intertwining of the reciprocal relations
of the entities, or, if
one wishes, of
an integration (which does
not solve the two
terms in a
third),
(From Hobbes to
Marx, pp. 260-1).
Notice how in the quotation above
Bobbio makes two mis-statements. The first is when he says that the negation of
the negation contains two moments whereby in
the first moment the negation eliminates the thesis, and in the second moment the negation of the
negation eliminates the negation. This is entirely misleading because “the
negation of the negation” is, yes, a separate moment from the negation, and the
negation is in turn a distinct moment of the thesis. But these “moments” are
separate and distinct only as “dialectical moments”, only as “aspects” of the
antagonism, certainly not as “chronological moments”! This means that the
negation of the negation is a necessary
dia-logical moment of the negation and the negation is a moment of the
thesis: – but these are not chrono-logical
moments that are separate in time! What is chrono-logical is only the
necessary extrinsication of the
antagonism contained in the thesis in historical time. But the thesis, its
negation and the negation of the negation are dialectical aspects of the one antagonism whose “resolution” (as
Bobbio calls it; we prefer the term “supersession”)
must take place historically if the antagonism in question is indeed historical
and not “ontological”: they are not “moments” in a chrono-logical sense as Bobbio’s explication would lead us to
believe.
The second error is that whereby
Bobbio confuses “the synthesis of
opposites” with “the negation of the
negation”. As we saw above, and as Bobbio himself noted in a later review
of Gramsci’s use of the dialectic (cf. “Nota sulla dialettica in Gramsci”, in Gramsci e la Concezione della Societa’
Civile) with the analytical acuity that was always his great attribute as a
thinker, this identification of synthesis
and negation of the negation is quite
incorrect because, although both involve a form of historical becoming (Italian, divenire),
only the latter – the negation of the negation – specifies that the thesis is
not preserved by the antithesis but
that both are entirely superseded!
The notion of “syn-thesis” instead, as the very name suggests, involves the
preservation of the thesis in the antithesis as “syn-chronic” and therefore
ahistorical or “ana-lytical” moments. This is a point to which Gramsci held
fast (cf. the Quaderni on “Il Materialismo
Storico”) – and it is in relation to Gramsci’s interpretation of the
dialectical method that Bobbio finally hits the mark on this account where
earlier (in Da Hobbes a Marx) he had
failed to do so.
As Adorno most adroitly insists
(in Lectures 1. pp6-7), the
antithesis and its negation are already
contained in the thesis – this is why the thesis contains its antagonism -, but are not contained by it because they explode the thesis – which is what is meant by “contra-diction”
intended historically as the “ex-plosion” of the thesis or the historical extrinsication of the antithesis
contained in the thesis and its resolution and supersession in its negation,
that is, the supersession of both thesis and the antithesis contained in it.
This is not a “triadic” movement of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. There is no
“syn-thesis” because the antagonism contained in the thesis (which is a concept
that contains an object that in turn contains real antagonism), which generates
the antithesis, does not preserve the thesis and the antithesis (as the
syncretism of “synthesis” implies) but rather “explodes” both (the thesis can
no longer contain in itself the antagonism contained by itself) and is resolved in
the negation of the negation.
Nevertheless, what I intend
to present to you as negative dialectics possesses something quite crucially
related to the concept of dialectics [6] in general - and this is something I
wish to clarify at the outset. It is that the concept of contradiction will
play a central role here, more particularly, the contradiction in things themselves, contradiction in the
concept, not contradiction between concepts. (Lectures, pp.5-6)
Adorno should specify that there
is “contradiction in the concept, not
contradiction between concepts” only
because there is “antagonism in the object and therefore contradiction in
social relations themselves”. This is so because “the concept” cannot be
isolated from its “object”: the contradiction that negative dialectics
addresses is in “the concept”; but this is only because, most importantly,
there is antagonism in “the object” or the historical reality that the con-cept seeks to grasp (Latin, con-cepere, to grasp, to capture).
Moreover, there is no synthesis
because the negation of the negation is not a “positive” – it is not a Hegelian
“reconciliation” but a real obliteration, overcoming and supersession of the
antagonism implicit in the thesis both as concept (ideology) and as real object
(antagonism).
And this is why I would say in
general… that the thesis that the negation of the negation is positive, an
affirmation, cannot be sustained. The
negation of the negation does not
result in a positive, or not automatically,
(Adorno, Lectures, p.17)
The later chapter
in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics on
“Concept and Categories” discusses the importance of the “negative” use of
dialectics. On Marx’s naturalism see A. Schmidt, Marx’s Concept of Nature, and C. Luporini, Dialettica e Materialismo. Marx’s insistence on “method” and
particularly on “organic totality” as a conciliation of the nature/society
dichotomy is noted by Schmidt (pp.40ff) but without pointing out its defects –
“positivity” as against “negativity” of the dialectic which then cannot be seen
as a “method” but at most as a critical tool. Schmidt correctly distinguishes
between Marx’s emphasis on the historical development of science as reflecting
human interests and needs and Engels’s quite erroneous application of “the
dialectical method” to the development of “nature” itself (!) as in the case of
the cell as the “being-in-itself of the organism”. It is one thing to apply the
dialectical method negatively, it is another to apply it “positively” – as
often does Marx with the “reciprocal action” – to claim a superior
“com-prehension” of historical development as “organic totality”. And then it
is quite another thing to transfer, as Engels does, this dialectical analysis
and critique to the very internal development – not of the “science of nature”
– but of “nature” itself! It is one thing to claim that human science (of nature or of history) develops dialectically, and
quite another to opine that nature itself
(whatever that is!) obeys dialectical laws!
Schmidt
distinguishes between the Marxian application of dialectics to a unified
natural-historical realm whereby the two condition each other and the Engelsian
application of the dialectical method to nature and history as “separate”
spheres such that the dialectical method is abstracted from them and acquires a
life of its own (pp.50ff). At p.54, Schmidt concludes:
El intento de
Engels, de interpretar el dominio de la naturaleza prehumana y extrahumana en
el sentido de una dialectica puramente
objetiva, debe llevar de hecho a la
incompatilidad de dialectica y materialismo en la que insisten algunos
criticos. Si la materia se concibe como dialecticamente estructurada en si’,
deja de ser materia en el sentido de la ciencia exacta natural, sobre la cual
Engels y sus seguidores rusos creen poder basar su posicion.
Schmidt is entirely
right here. A notion of dialectics that applied as a universal method to which
both history and nature are subject would separate history from nature and be
rendered “incompatible” with the scientific understanding and exploration of
this separate “nature”. Yet, whilst he does chastise the Engelsian abuse of
dialectics as “a cosmic positive principle” (p.53), we cannot agree with Schmidt’s
attempt to minimise or obfuscate Marx’s own mistaken use of reciprocal action
as a “positive” method of understanding reality – even in the Marxian
distinction between “investigation” and “presentation”. Dialectics may be used
only “negatively”, to sift out hypostases in historical explanations –
including “scientific methods” as objective procedures to find out “scientific
laws”. Schmidt believes that “dialectical contradictions” arise in human
history – which is right so long as we see these “contradictions” as
“dia-logic” tools to guide our “praxis” in a negative sense with regard to the interpretation of history – that
is, to correct hypostases and eliminate antinomies and apories (as applied to
“concepts and categories”, says Adorno) -, but not as intrinsic to human
history except in the sense of “antagonism”. History contains antagonisms whose
resolution or supersession invites dialectical analysis, but it does not
contain “dialectical contradictions”.
This is a point
that applies most eminently to Lukacs’s own conception of “the dialectical
method”. And in fact, Schmidt does not fail to advert to Lukacs in his own “historical”
interpretation of this “positive” dialectical method, in direct contrast to
Engels’s “extension” of it to “pre-human and extra-human nature” (p.55):
Si el concepto
absoluto que se realiza a si mismo desaparece como motor de las contradicciones
y solo quedan como portadores del espiritu hombres condicionados
historicamente, ya no solo se puede hablar tampoco de una dialectica autonoma
de la naturaleza exterior a los hombres. Faltan en este caso todos los momentos
esenciales para la dialectica. Esto lo ha senalado criticamente por primera vez
un estudioso de Marx, Gyorgy Lukacs, en Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein:
Los malentendidos que surgen de
la exposicion de la dialectica por Engels, estriban esencialmente en el hecho
de que este – siguiendo el falso ejemplo de Hegel – extiende el metodo
dialectico incluso al conocimiento de la naturaleza. Sin embargo, las
determinaciones decisivas de la dialectica: accion reciproca de sujeto y
objeto, unidad de teoria y praxis, modificacion historica del sustrato de las
categorias como fundamento de su modificacion en el pensamiento, etc., no estan
presentes en el conocimiento de la naturaleza. [HCC, p.24, fn.6]
In the passage
cited by Schmidt above Lukacs specifically refers to “the reciprocal action of
subject and object” – which means that he was referring to “historical”
reality, which was the only reality possible for Lukacs and his “identical
subject-object” in HCC, (“an attempt to out-Hegel
Hegel”, p.xxiii) and not also to “pre-human and extra-human nature”. Like
Lukacs, Schmidt misconstrues the Marxian dialectic in that he seems to believe
that whilst the third “law” (contradiction) cannot be applied to “nature”, at
least the second “law” – “the law of reciprocal action” - can be so applied:
but Lukacs is referring to human “history” as something to which “reciprocal
action” applies – which is also false in our view – and certainly not to
“nature”. This is confirmed by Lukacs’s concluding sentence to this footnote
alerting to the need to canvass the relation of history and nature in a
separate study.
Again, Schmidt
clearly maintains that there is such a thing as a “dialectics of nature”, as
well as a “pre-human and extra-human nature” that does obey the second “law of
dialectics” – that of “reciprocal action” – which is nonsense, whereas “human
history” or “society” is subject to all three “laws”. This Manichaean view of
the “law of reciprocal action” as a “method” to which “nature” is subjected is
revealed unequivocally by Schmidt in this statement at p.55:
La naturaleza que
precede la sociedad humana solo lleva a polaridades y oposiciones de momentos
exteriores unos a otros, y en el major de los casos a la accion reciproca, pero
no a la contradiccion dialectica. El “sistema de la naturaleza” de Engels es,
como el de Holbach, un sistema de meras acciones reciprocas:…
In other words,
only “the law of reciprocal action” may be applied to “nature-in-itself”,
whereas the law of negation of the negation can be applied only to human
society. Note that Schmidt seems to object to the interpretation of the
dialectic as a “purely objective domain of pre-human and extra-human nature”,
but he has no objection to Engels’s presentation of the dialectical method as
“laws”, presumably because he approves of Marx’s use of these “laws” to the
“unified” (reciprocal action) field of nature and history. At p.56:
Las observaciones
criticas aqui formuladas a la concepcion de la naturaleza de Engels, no
significan sin embargo que deba rechazarse directamente el concepto de una
dialectica de la naturaleza. Su proposito es mas bien demonstrar que la teoria Marxista
misma contiene ya la dialectica de la naturaleza con la cual Engels cree deber
completarla.
Although the
Marxian premise of a “unity” or “organic totality” of the interaction of nature
and society serves to minimise the damage of the “positive” use of dialectics
whether in its investigative or explicatory role, the fact remains that
dialectics cannot be used either to investigate or to explain anything at all!
It is not a “positive method” full stop!
Ya que las
relaciones de los hombres entre si’, la dialectica del proceso laboral como
proceso natural se amplia a la dialectica de la historia humana en general. (At
p.57.)
Clearly here
Schmidt elevates what can only be a negative use of dialectics, its dia-logic character, to an actual positive role as a process that
determines “human history in general”
– something that is quite inadmissible because it hypostatizes human history
into a “fixed” or “reified” or at least “determinable” process.
Lukacs denies that
any principles of dialectics can be applied to a “nature” that is anything
other than a human construct: thus, he insists on the (equally Manichaean)
dichotomy of “history” and “nature” in Marx whereby “nature” is a human
construct not just conceptually but also as the product of human
objectification – a Hegelian subversion
of Marx to which Schmidt rightly objects (at pp.77-8).
Todas las
relaciones sociales estan mediadas por cosas naturales, y viceversa. Son
siempre relaciones de los hombres “entre si’” y con la naturaleza.
Asi’ como la
naturaleza no se puede resolver en los momentos de el “espiritu” concebido
metafisicamente, tampoco se disuelve en los modos historicos de su apropriacion
practica. En esta falsa perspectiva cae Lukacs en su escrito entitulado Historia y conciencia de clase, que por
lo demas es importante para la historia de la interpretacion de Marx. En
vinculacion con su detallado analisis de los aspectos filosoficos del
fetichismo de las mercancias, Lukacs llega a hablar tambien del concepto de la
naturaleza en Marx:
La naturaleza es una categoria
social, es decir lo que en un determinado estadio del desarrollo social vale
como naturaleza, el modo en que [78] ocurre la relacion entre esta naturaleza y
el hombre y la forma en que se produce el ajuste entre este y aquella y, por lo
tanto, lo que la naturaleza tiene que significar en lo que respecta a su forma
y contenido, su alcance y su objetividad, esta siempre socialmente
condicionado.
Lukacs senala con
razon que toda conciencia de la naturaleza, asi’ como la naturaleza fenomenica
misma, estan condicionadas sociohistoricamente. Sin embargo, para Marx la
naturaleza no es solo una categoria
social. De ninguna manera se la puede dissolver sin residuo segun la forma, el
contenido, el alcance y la objetividad, en los procesos historicos de su
apropriacion. [pp.77-8]
This problem of, as
Schmidt puts it, “the relation of human beings inter se and with nature” is the problem of metabolic interaction
or production that we have been exploring thus far in our study of Schumpeter
at the level of human beings, or society, and the physical environment. It is
time to move now to the more specific aspect of how this metabolism takes place
– the question of human objectification and labour. Schmidt’s work was
published before Lukacs’s 1967 Preface where he seems to reply almost directly
to Schmidt’s criticism (and Colletti’s, outlined in the Preface to the Italian
edition of Schmidt’s work), and fully accepts it. What neither Schmidt nor
Colletti or Lukacs do is allow for the category of human needs that are meta-bolic in that they are the pro-duct of
human objectification as metabolic interaction between humans and their
physical environment (avoid the term “nature” which separates the environment
from humans rather than uniting the two immanently so that the two are distinct
but not “opposing”). There is no antagonism and therefore no dialectic between
humans and their physical environment: but antagonism is mediated nevertheless
by human needs that involve the environment (Um-welt, surrounding world).
All great Marxist
theoreticians incorrectly pinpoint this immanent identification of human beings
with their physical environment through the notion of human needs as well as
labour as living activity or objectification precisely because they insist on
this equivocal word “nature” with its “ontological” overtones. (This is
something that Heidegger wisely avoids, preferring “physis”, Pathmarks,
p.183.)
This mistaken
dichotomy of “nature” and “society” which then gives rise to the view of
“nature” as an “ontological” category – as something “objectively separate”
from human being –and therefore to the translation of human praxis from its
immanence to a transcendental relation, is due in great part to the use of the
word “nature” to describe what is really “the surrounding environment”
(Um-welt) of human beings and their metabolic interaction with it. Lukacs
provides a clear example of this misapprehension:
It is true that the attempt is
made to explain all ideological phenomena by reference to their basis in
economics but, despite this, the purview of economics is narrowed down because
its basic Marxist category, labor as the
mediator of the metabolic interaction between society and nature, is
missing…
It is self-evident that this
means the disappearance of the
ontological objectivity of nature upon which this process of change is
based, (HCC, p.xvii).
Here we can see most clearly how
easily “metabolic interaction” between human beings and their environment (Um-welt) is confused with “the ontological objectivity of nature”,
which then again can be “unified” or “synthesised” with “society” through the
dialectic of “reciprocal action” leading to a static “organic totality” –
something that Lucio Colletti punctually does in the Preface to the Italian
edition of Schmidt’s work where he praises the author’s insistence on the
phrase “dialectical materialism” (in opposition to the Engelsian, then
Stalinist, Diamat). (We will discuss
Colletti shortly.)
Indeed, it is this notion of
“totality” that Lukacs defends as the still valid most important contribution
of HCC –
“It is undoubtedly one of the great achievements of HCC to have
reinstated the category of totality in the central position it had occupied throughout Marx’s works,” (HCC, p.xx).
And this despite the fact that
Lukacs acknowledges, by citing his earlier summation in the book, how his
privileging of the notion of “totality” had been at the expense of “economics”:
-
“It is not the primacy of economic
motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference
between Marxism and bourgeois science, but the point of view of totality”.
Lukacs does not consider how
these theoretical errors may have resulted from his abuse of “the dialectical
method”, which he had always identified as the “scientific” way of reaching
“the point of view of totality”, re-affirming instead its validity and its
lasting centrality to “orthodox Marxism” (at p.xx, HCC).
[Colletti on “unity” of Marxian
method.] But alas these are flaws that have afflicted theoretical
Marxism as well. As an illustration, we can allude to Lucio Colletti’s remarks
in Ideologia e Societa’ (at p.16ff)
where he discusses Schumpeter’s quotation above concerning Marx’s ability to
combine economic facts and theory in one indissolubly unified synthesis. At first, Colletti agrees
with us that this “chemical mixture” is due precisely to the strict connection
in Marxian economic theory between the interpersonal human side and the
relation of human beings as a species to their physical environment, in such a
way that economics is never seen as a question of mere (universal, eternal)
“exchange” but is indeed treated as a theorisation of the satisfaction and
creation of physiological human needs in which “pro-duction” – not “exchange”!
– is the essential aspect. It is from the perspective of the production of human needs that any distinction between “theory”
and “fact”, between “economics” and “sociology”, “nature” and “history” and –
most important for Marxist theory – “structure” and “superstructure” becomes
illusory.
Colletti perceives the essential
role of production, of metabolic interaction, to the
theorisation of capitalism. But then he immediately falls victim to the
confusion of dialectical “synthesis” – that is to say, the interpretation of
Marxian dialectics as the synthesis of thesis and antithesis, instead of as
“the negation of the negation” - with the notion of “organic totality”, of
“unity”, of “the whole” – which is a trap into which much of what we call
theoretical Marxism has fallen in the past.
We can now understand how this unity of economics and sociology [14]
of nature and history in Marx
does not signify an identity between
the
terms. It involves neither a
reduction of society to nature, nor of nature
to society; it does not reduce
human society to an ant-hill, nor human life
to philosophical life. But we can
also understand, conversely, how the
avoidance of these two unilateral
antitheses on Marx’s part is due pre-
cisely to their organic composition, i.e. to their unification in a ‘whole’.
This whole is a totality, but a determinate totality; it is a synthesis
of
distinct elements, it is a unity, but a unity of heterogeneous parts. From this
vantage point, it is easy to see
(if in foreshortened form) both Marx's
debt to Hegel and the real
distance that separates them. (pp.13-4)
Here Colletti confuses both the
notion of “negation”, which he wrongly substitutes with “synthesis”; and he
confuses also the last two aspects of Marxian dialectics - one valid and the
other invalid, which, as we emphasised above - must be kept separate. He is
quite correct in insisting on the primacy of the process of pro-duction in the sense of metabolic
interaction that we have outlined in this work as the locus of political
antagonism in capitalism. This is essential to the notion of metabolic
interaction or production as a “becoming” (Bobbio’s divenire), that is, as a historical process of human
objectification that can be accompanied by historical forms of antagonism. But
then, as we are arguing, Colletti hypostatises
this historical antagonism by insisting on the separate antithetical analytical
categories or “entities” of “nature” and “history” and their “reunification” or
“synthesis” only from the theoretical perspective of an “organic totality” or
“whole” – just like Schumpeter’s vision of “the
social process as one indivisible whole” or Lukacs’s notion of “totality”.
The problem with this notion of
“totality”, as Bobbio splendidly explains, is that it depends on a static antithetical opposition
(economics/sociology, society/nature, nature/history) that “does not resolve the two [opposing] terms [thesis and antithesis] into
a third”, that is, into “the negation of the negation” which is the
supersession of this antithetical antagonism through its historical
extrinsication. Consequently, any theory that represents social reality as an
“organic totality”, as a “fixed” or “positive” entity, is not “dialectical” in
that it does not allow for the supersession
(Hegel’s Aufhebung) of the social
antagonism it seeks to theorise. To refer to a dualism of “society” and
“nature”, for instance, is to posit an antithesis that cannot be superseded for
the simple reason that neither “society” nor “nature” as concepts will ever be able to be “negated”. In reality, the two
terms are not antithetical at all because there is no antagonism, no contra-diction within them that can be resolved historically.
Perhaps the biggest problem posed
by this fictitious antithesis is that human beings come to see “nature” as an
inimical force, an evil, that must be vanquished. See Simone Weil’s “Critique
du Marxisme” in Reflexions.
In expounding his argument, Colletti
relies on Dobb, Political Economy and
Capitalism, who also focuses on the limitation of neoclassical theory to
the sphere of exchange as a reason for the disjunction in bourgeois economic
theory between its logico-mathematical schemata and empirical analysis. Unlike
Colletti, however, Dobb does not see the metabolic
side of capitalist production; and he refers instead to the emargination by
bourgeois theory of all “institutional and historical factors” – that is, its
restriction of economic theory to “inter-personal relations” and not to
“political elements” or “superstructural” ones. Because Dobb was a firm
believer in the labour theory of value, to his mind the central antagonism of
capitalism lies in the unequal
distribution of income which is due to “superstructural” institutional
factors, for it cannot possibly centre on antagonism in the process of
production because ultimately the value extracted from this process (that of
valorisation, as Marx calls it) is fixed! This is a flaw common to all
theories, including Marx’s, that share the labour theory of value – as we shall
see shortly.
It is obvious how the labour
theory of value, by insisting on the existence of a Law of Value that
determines prices “scientifically”, removes the focus from the sphere of
metabolic production – whence is derived its artificial separation of what it
sees as the superstructural aspects
of capitalism from its presumably strictly economic
or structural aspects. The same
applies to Lenin’s remarks (in the Philosophical
Notebooks; see ch.1 in Colletti’s Ideology
and Society but researched in great detail in his Il Marxismo e Hegel in turn discussed by K.Anderson in Lenin, Hegel and Western Marxism,
pp223ff ) about how Marxian analysis provides a “skeleton” that moves in
lockstep, as it were, with “flesh-and-blood” factual analysis.
(See also discussion in Schmidt’s
chapter 2 on “Historical Mediation of Nature”.) The problematic relationship of
Marx’s labour theory of value (“the structure”) and the politico-economic
institutions of capitalism (“the superstructure”) will be examined next through
a close study of Marx’s seminal text A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Zur Kritik).