From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@lubs.leeds.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Nov 25 2002 - 07:27:28 EST
Hello Michael, Jerry and all, Re 8046 and related posts: There is too much going on here than I really have time to get to grips with but: (1) I agree with Paul Cockshott that the Heisenburg uncertainty principle is simply a manifestation of idealism that has nothing positive to offer social theory. (2) Surely it is clear that 'dialectical materialism' attempts to answer the philosophical questions raised in previous posts in a Marxian manner. Stalin's debasement of the term must not blind us from the many Marxists, from Marx and Engels onwards, who have developed dialectical materialism. (I do not wish to enter into a debate on the Marx / Engels' relationship here!) (3) Ilyenkov, as Pilling was among the first to show, articulates what he terms 'materialist dialcetics' with value theory and political economy. In essence Newton, or at least his philsophical 'upholders' such as Locke, manifest 'mechanical' materialism. (Descartes' own mechanistic conception of matter led him to dualism in order to try to account for the thinking body). Mechanical materialism must be superseeded by dialectical materialism, and the notion of scientific law is thereby superseeded also. The 'clever idealism' of (especially Hegelian) dialectics can thereby be put on a materialist basis. Thus, from this perspective, Michael's apparent charge that Marx is stuck at the level of the Lockean (Newtonian) concpetion of law, is incorrect. The charge ignores Marx's critique of mechanistic materialism, his critique of idealist dialectics and his championing of materialist dialectics. (4) The above is just a very brief statement of dialectical materialism. But I just wanted to remind people of it and to suggest that in Ilyenkov's, and others', hands it is a vibrant philosophy, not to be ignored. (5) Re value. It seems to me very damaging to assimilate all quantitative value theory to the axiomatic method. The magnitude of value is important. E.g. the magnitude of prices, wages and profits are important! To theorise them is not to be an axiomatic model builder. A final assertion: I do not see *how* value can possibly be theorised outside of a labour theory of value. Labour time is the only possible material property of commodities that could be systematically related to commodities (this is Marx's openning argument in 'Capital' I think). Without such a property then political economy would be quite impossible. I fear that Michael's apparent view leads down this impossible road. Sorry for all the brief assertions. Hope something useful in the above. Andy
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