Date: Fri, 10 Jul 98
From: cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk (Mr C Smith)
Anyway, our question still stands unanswered: what has Marx's standpoint to say about Nature and natural science?
Maybe, one day....
Cyril
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998
From: labsoc-at-netspace.net.au (davie maclean)
To:cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk
These are big questions. There are some problems with the way Marx and 'Marxism' has attempted a response.
First of all - is it the case that the essence of humanity is expressed in social labour ?
I don't believe it is possible to answer with a yes. Even if the concept labour is broadened to cover all forms of human activity, there are aspects of humanity, such as the imagination, that can not meaningfully be brought into this category. So that even if alienation is eliminated from the labour process it would still be possible for an inhumane society to continue.
Secondly - is Hegel's resolution of the conflict between subject and object, between the concept and the reality it covers, acceptable as a guide to human freedom in its relationship with nature ?
From my reading of the past few months it has become clear that there is a whole body of 20th century thought that answers this question with a no. Lukacs' clash with Engels over 'alizarin' was one example, but likewise Heidegger, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Feyerabend among a host of others, all of who criticise the 'instrumental' form of rationality that is embodied in Hegel, and to some extent Marx, as thinkers within the tradition of modernity.
My question to you Cyril is to what extent are you familiar with this body of thought and its line of attack ? Adorno's Negative Dialectics for example, engages Hegel directly.
How would you respond to it, either on behalf of Hegel, or simply from your own point of view ?
Davie
From: cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk
Dear Davie,
A question: what is 'instrumental rationality'? Illustrate your answer with direct quotations from the works of Hegel and Marx. Do not write on both sides of the examination paper at once.
Thanks,
Cyril
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998
To:cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk
From:labsoc-at-netspace.net.au (davie maclean)
Instrumental or 'purposive' rationality is a term first coined I believe by Max Weber in his work on the Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism. This form of rationality is the kind that typically goes on in the work process and involves the moulding of nature to human ends. The roots of the concept lie in Aristotle's distinction between 'poesis' (activity that has a purpose outside of itself such as the work of the craftsman) and praxis (work whose purpose is contained within it such as playing a game of football, having a chat over a pint).
This distinction plays a large role in the philosophy of Heidegger and others like Hannah Arendt. In the 20th century this form of rationality has come under severe critique as its domination over most forms of human activity has been related to the domination of technology over society. As Marxists we would put this somewhat differently (ie capitalism being the problem rather than technology) but the point is not inconsistent with a Marxist analysis in my view.
The Frankfurt School picked up on this distinction bringing psychoanalysis into it, and ultimately it ends up in the hands of Jurgen Habermas who contrasts instrumental with 'communicative' rationality - ie rationality whose goal is understanding between humans. He builds his entire philosophy around the possibilities communicative rationality may hold for a way out of the 'iron cage' (Weber's expression) of modern, bureaucratic, rationality that reduces everything - both nature and human beings - to instruments to be used for other ends.
The accusation against Marx is that he remains locked into a framework of instrumental rationality. This translates into a belief in the power of science and technology to liberate humanity and the 'productivism' of the workers movement touched on in the ISF discussion on the lessons of the early Soviet experience. I think this is unfair to Marx as your own discussion on his attitude to the Narodiniki in Russia bears witness. However my impression is that the verdict against Hegel is a definite guilty on this one from the little study of Hegel I have completed so far.
Hope that helps,
Davie
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 98
From: cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk (Mr C Smith)
Dear Davie,
Nice to hear from you again - even if your questions give me a headache!
'There are some problems with the way Marx and 'Marxism' has attempted a response.'
Look, I think it is wrong to look to anybody, including Marx and Hegel, to provide us with 'the answers'. The best we can hope for, is that they help us formulate questions about how humanity must live.
'First of all - is it the case that the essence of humanity is expressed in social labour ?'
I have tried to understand Marx's answer to the problem of 'the human essence' in terms of humanity as the socially self-creating and self-conscious part of nature. This is inseparable from imagination, in particular, (see Capital, Chapter 7, for example,) and any other aspect of human life in general. ('I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.') Alienation means the denial of social self-creativity. If you can 'eliminate' that, I shall be quite satisfied, thank you.
'Is Hegel's resolution of the conflict between subject and object, between the concept and the reality it covers, acceptable as a guide to human freedom in its relationship with nature ?'
No, because that would accept Hegel's assumption that the road to freedom is via philosophy. Marx's 1844 'critique of Hegel's dialectic and philosophy as a whole' took H's answer as itself a symptom of alienation, and his standpoint as 'that of modern political economy'. M's standpoint, on the contrary, is 'social humanity and human society'.
Once you get past Hegel and Marx, I'm on much shakier ground, though. I've tried to read some of the guys you throw at me, but I can't really claim to understand them. I think it might be interesting that the most important people - Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Wittgenstein - all seem to question, in different ways, the possibility of philosophy finding the answers. And the only one of them who gets anywhere near understanding what Marx was doing is Heidegger, and he was a Nazi. The only bits of him I have been able to get much from are some of his things about the history of philosophy - they are amazing. I know that Lukacs is fantastically knowledgable, but I believe he never really got the hang either of Hegel or Marx. Have you read Meszaros' Beyond Capital? He does a job on his former teacher, showing how his Stalinism was inherent in his entire philosophical outlook.
The Frankfurters are another story. Their disillusionment with proletarian revolution caused them, with all their erudition, to completely lose their way. 1968 really showed up Marcuse and especially Adorno. (Meszaros' previous book, The Power of Ideology, is worth looking at on Adorno.) Horkheimer's The Eclipse of Reason I once found useful, but I read that nearly 40 years back.
But I don't want to pretend that I have really got to grips with these people. If you are studying them carefully, that's great. I look forward to you proving me wrong about them.
On the question of nature, I believe that the task is not to look for Marx's answer - this may not exist. (Engels is no help at all here! Who cares about alizarin?) Rather, I see the task like this: take Marx's conception of science, as exemplified by his joint critique of political economy, socialism and dialectics, and develop it in the light of modern natural science. In other words, what I want to see is a critique of natural science. ('Critique', let me repeat, means tracing the contradictions of a science to their source: the conflict between humanity and its inhuman shell.)
You must understand that I am too old now to learn any new philosophical tricks! The language of late twentieth-century philosophy completely loses me, and postmodernism gives me a pain in several parts of my anatomy.
So it's over to you!!
Best wishes,
Cyril
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 98
From: cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk (Mr C Smith)
Thanks for the 'instrumental rationality' explanation, which is useful.
However, the purpose of my instrumental enquiry was to nudge you towards an examination of the texts of Hegel and Marx themselves.
I hope it is not too arrogant of me, but I am deeply suspicious of all academic experts and whizz-kids. I do not believe that either Hegel or Marx have anything to do with the caricature of them criticised by these guys. So I insist on checking this via actual texts - accept no imitations. We know about Marx's critique of 'theory', but Hegel's use of the term Reason is also, surely, the direct opposite of this attitude.
This is one reason why I bore people by insisting on the fact that Marx never used the word 'capitalism'. Nor does Marx believe that 'science and technology' can 'liberate humanity' - that is humanity's own job, in the shape of the proletariat. And so on.
So it might be interesting for you to check on which actual texts, if any, are referred to when they make these charges. In my experience, these scholars and gentlemen rarely bother with such niceties. When it comes to Marx - anything goes! As I think I mentioned in my book, the great Habermas accepted Stalin's 'Dialectical and Historical Materialism' - a friend of mine likes to call it 'Diabolical and Hysterical' - as 'a handbook'!
Best wishes,
Cyril
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 98
From: cyrilsmith-at-cix.compulink.co.uk (Mr C Smith)
Dear Davie,
Re-reading your message about 'instrumental rationality', I am astonished at the chutzpa with which your teachers put Hegel under such a heading. If you have any references to actual texts on this, I shall be very interested. (In other words, I don't believe it!)
For example, look at how Hegel sets out in the 'Introduction' to the Philosophy of Right. He must begin with the will, but first points out that Right, like everything else, exemplifies logic. In the Logic, too, he stresses the importance of the will in Reason. Hegel's great achievement - as well as the chief site of his errors - is to view Reason as the purposive activity of human self-creation.
Your masters have even got Aristotle wrong, I think. 'Poesis' must not be assimilated to the modern idea of labour, as used by economists. Both poesis and praxis are subordinate to sophia in Aristotle's hierarchy of knowledge. It is episteme, and even more so sophia, which gets hold of the eidos. Neither poesis nor praxis can grasp it. Of course, Aristotle the slave-owner thinks that only slave-owners can engage in this work.
(On all this stuff, let me plug again my friend Ute Bublitz's book Beyond Philosophy. There is no Marx in it - at least, by name - but on Hegel and Aristotle it is very important. Innocent of 'secondary literature', it gives a lot of quotations, including some re-translations from Greek and German.)
And what is all this about 'domination by technology'? Isn't this just the fundamental illusion of alienated life, that productive powers are the productive powers of capital? It is like making God the creator of man, instead of the other way round. That is the relevance of my objection to the word 'capitalism', which hides the point of Marx's book: the way that labour is forced into the shell of the self-production of the capital-relation. So the treatment of people like things, is concealed as something 'natural'.
Altogether, I am trying to issue a warning. In the university more than anywhere else, keep in mind the favourite motto of both Marx and Rosa: 'Doubt everything!'
Best wishes,
Cyril