From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Sun Oct 09 2005 - 08:44:14 EDT
Hi Chris, Paul C, Andy, Ajit and Riccardo: Thanks for all of the comments -- mostly on Smith. In reply: 1a. While Smith was a materialist and had a (certain) historical perspective, historical materialism is more than just the sum of materialism and historical. It is a _particular_ philosophical perspective and I think it is at best confusing to refer to Smith's historical materialism. While there is no doubt that materialism preceded Marx (a point made by Paul C and highlighted in various writings by Marx and Engels themselves) there are particular and central perspectives associated with HM which were original. 1b. Consider the quote from _WN_ provided by Ajit: > "Had human institutions, therefore, never disturbed > the natural course of things, the progressive wealth > and increase of the towns would, in every political > society, be consequential, and in proportion to the > improvement and cultivation of the territory and > country." Would M&E have referred as above to "the natural course of things" in relation to wealth creation? Of course not. It is a central proposition of historical materialism that neither capitalism nor any mode of production is natural: there is no "natural course of things" related to social and economic development. In this sense, I think I agree with the basic thrust of Andy's point: > I'd suggest Smith and classical political economy > were certainly materialist (they had classes based on > production, they introduce the LTV) but not really > historical because capitalist classes are taken as > natural and 'history' merely a set of aberrations > prior to the natural (capitalist) order. 2. While I see the point made by Andy Blunden (and re-stated by Chris) about Hegel's early writings, the reason why it is misleading to refer to Hegel's historical materialism is because Hegel at no point in his intellectual career was a materialist. To understand why this is the case one can not look at one part of his work in isolation; one has to examine his world-view as a whole. Thus Chris makes the point: > It is true he gives more importance to labour in the > early work but it is still in the interests of the spirit. Whatever we can or can not gain by an examination of Hegel's theory we must not forget the role of Absolute Spirit in that world-view. That is a world-view that, despite affinities for other aspects of Hegelianism, Marx and Engels took exception to. It turns out that the claim that Andy Blunden, on the 'hegel-marx' yahoo group, made about Hegel's historical materialism could very well have been a typo: while he simply referred to Hegel's historical materialism in one post he added several days later: > I presume I put "historical materialism" in inverted commas. He hadn't and in his first reply didn't correct the mistake hence the misunderstanding. In solidarity, Jerry
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