From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Apr 11 2007 - 15:44:03 EDT
Hi Dogan, You have made me think about the source of Marx's ideas about totality and historical discontinuities and socialized epistemology, so I haven't been able to respond to your posts yet. Perhaps what Korsch has partially in mind is how in the course of his critique of political economy Marx explodes the metaphysical conception of the self at the heart of philosophical liberalism. I sent this quote from Bhikhu Parekh to the list before: Bhikhu Parekh, Marx?s Theory of Ideology, pp. 38-39 Again in order to argue that an individual could sell his labour to others, his physical and mental capacities and activities, of which his labour ultimately consists, must be considered alienable, and therefore not an integral and inseparable part of him. The classical Athenian believed that to render any form of service, especially the physical, to another man in return for money, even if only for a short time, was a form of slavery, and unacceptable to a free man. Since the bourgeois mode of production required that men should be free to sell their labour, that is their skills, capacities and activities to others, it had to define the individual so that were not considered an integral and inseparable part of him. He had to be seen as somehow separate from and only contingently related to them, so that he is not believed to be sold when they are, and is doomed to remain free even when his activities and skills are no longer under his control. In order to say that his freedom is not compromised when his abilities, skills and activities are placed at another man?s disposal, he had to be defined in the barest possible manner. Since almost everything about an individual was considered alienable?his skills, capacities, and activities?the crucial question arose as to what as to be considered essential to him, such that its alienation was his alienation and his loss of control over it amounted to his loss of freedom. The bourgeois society by and large located his essential humanity in the interrelated capacities of choice and will. For it they represented man?s differentia specifica, and were the bases of human dignity. The individual was, above all, an agent. As long as he was not physically overpowered, hypnotized or otherwise deprived of his powers of choice and will, his actions were uniquely his, and therefore sole responsibility. It did not matter how painful his alternatives were, how much his character had been distorted by his background and upbringing and how much his capacities of choice and will were debilitated by his circumstances. As long as he was able to choose, his choices were his responsibility. The individual was abstracted from his social background and circumstances which could not be considered co-agents of and co-responsible for his actions. He stood alone, all by himself, striped of his social relations, circumstances and background, in a word, his social being as Marx called it, facing the world in his sovereign isolation and, like God, exercising his conditioned freedom of choice and will. In short their conditions of existence required the bourgeoisie to equate the individual with an abstract mental capacity, namely the capacity to choose and will, and to define him in asocial and idealist terms?. When the individual is so austerely conceived, the question arises as to how he is related to his alienable bodily and mental activities and powers. They cannot be conceived as his modes of being, the ways in which ?he? expresses himself and exists for himself and others; they can only be understood as something he has rather than he is. The bourgeois writers appropriately them as his properties, which in the legal language become his possessions. If ?he? referred to the totality of his being and not merely to the will or choice, his power and activities would be seen as an integral part of him, as constitutive of him, and therefore not as his possessions which he could dispose of ?at will?. He would not be able to alienate them, any more than he could alienated his will or choice. And his so-called ?freedom? to sell his capacities and activities would appear not as freedom, but slavery. > In *Marxism and Philosophy* Karl Korsch says Marxian critique of political > economy is at the same time a deeper critique of philosophy than was in > early Marxian writings. How can we make a sense of this? > > Thanks for replies > > Dogan > > http://www.marx.org/archive/korsch/1923/marxism-philosophy.htm > > "A radical critique of bourgeois society can no longer start from > ‘any’ form of theoretical or practical consciousness whatever, as Marx > thought as late as 1843. It must start from the particular forms of > consciousness which have found their scientific expression in the > political economy of bourgeois society. Consequently the critique of > political economy is theoretically and practically the first priority. Yet > even this deeper and more radical version of Marx’s revolutionary > critique of society never ceases to be a critique of the whole of > bourgeois society and so of all its forms of consciousness. It may seem as > if Marx and Engels were later to criticise philosophy only in an > occasional and haphazard manner. In fact, far from neglecting the subject, > they actually developed their critique of it in a more profound and > radical direction. For proof, it is only necessary to re-establish the > full revolutionary meaning of Marx’s critique of political economy, as > against certain mistaken ideas about it which are common today. This may > also serve to clarify both its place in the whole system of Marx’s > critique of society, and its relation to his critique of ideologies like > philosophy." > ________________________________________________________________________ > Kostenlos: AOL eMail > 2 GB Speicherplatz sowie erstklassiger Spam- und eMail Virenschutz. > Sichern Sie sich Ihre persönliche eMail Adresse noch heute! >
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