From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2007 - 06:19:34 EDT
Hi Jerry, You asked: What authors do you think have used levels of abstraction as a "subterfuge"? To be honest I do not have a really good example here at home just now, to show you what I mean. I am recalling discussions occurring at the time I was a varsity student in 1978-1982 when Althusserianism was influential among social scientists. But you often strike it in the transformation problem literature - "Marx's method of abstraction" is supposed to explain why there is no problem and so on, or, if we follow his method of abstraction then there is no problem. Which is to say that what he says is allegedly true, because of his method of abstraction. But if I say, "X is true, because I say that it ought to be theorised in a certain way, and if it is theorised in that way, it is true" then I am not saying much, other than that my meanings are true, if you adopt them as true. I have to explain at least why X has to be theorised in that way rather than another way, or why you ought to adopt my theory rather than another one, otherwise my position is arbitrary or fiduciary. The substantive point is that economic life is a complex process, a totality with many interconnected circuits mutually influencing each other, which could be studied from a variety of angles, and it gives rise to all kinds of theorems which hold "other things being equal", i.e. ceteris paribus. Indeed Marx first studied economic laws in their ""pure form" and then tried to integrate various factors which modified the laws. His argument is that the valid procedure is one, which allows all the theorems to be contained within one system which consistently explains cases in which "others things are not equal" or why the exception proves the rule. A theorem or description has a certain validity at a certain level of generality and in a certain context, but at a lower or higher level of generality (at a level of greater or lesser specificity) the theorem or description must be qualified, because it applies only with certain conditionals. The process of redefinition and qualifying can occur consistently in a methodical way, or it can occur in a slipshod manner. It can be disciplined by logic and experience, or occur in an arbitrary way. It can be eclectic or systematic. Marx says: "In the analysis of economic forms... neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm But he goes on to explain directly thereafter that he doesn't just abstract willy-nilly for the sake of a story, or start from a principle, rather he studied England as the locus classicus of the capitalist mode of production, and abstracted from this historical example (and the theories made about it) what he thought to be the general laws of this mode of production. So the abstraction is a generalisation from experience. He tries to write it up, in a way which shows how each of the contradictions implied by commercial trade are practically resolved and mediated, but also how these solutions themselves give rise to fresh contradictions. But with Althusser you get a very different interpretation. Althusser claims boldly that "the concept of history can no longer be empirical, i.e. historical" (Reading Capital, p. 105). In fact, history becomes unhistorical, and quite consistent with this idea, Althusser indeed explicitly calls the totality of structured structures he identifies an "eternity" in a Spinozist metaphysical sense of self-causing, infinite in its kind, and necessarily existing. But this is merely a sophistical, grandiose way of saying that if I want to cognise changes in the passing of time, I can do so only with the aid of a referent which remains constant. I cannot have a variable without a constant, I cannot fully define finitude without infinity, and so on. Real history must then be made to conform to Althusser's eternal, superhistorical concepts. But Spinoza is not Marx, and Althusser in fact adopts an approach which is diametrically opposed to Marx & Engels. Althussser doesn't abstract from a real empirical object, instead he has this hierarchy of abstractions already, which he wants to superimpose on empirical reality. And he wants to endow these abstractions with a special, privileged status a priori, in advance of experience, rather than validate them in the course of empirical research. From there, we get arguments that a claim is true, because it is stated at a certain level of abstraction, and if it turns out not to be true, it must be because it is stated at another level of abstraction or the wrong level of abstraction. But this is childish and vulgar, because we can go round and round redefining things ad nauseam, and something will always be true at a certain level of abstraction and false at another, you can go any which way with it. Althusser has these generalisations to which real history must be made to conform, and therefore the critical question of how we arrive at our generalisations doesn't even arise. In the end, all it boils down to, is the claim "Marx said so, therefore it is true" which is a dogma or argument from authority. Glucksmann has this funny critique of Althusser's Stalinism which he calls "a ventriloquist's structuralism" (who whispers the lines? how do we know?) but in the end it's a quasi-religion, a faith in a theory independent of its actual application. Whether or not a level of abstraction is appropriate cannot be simply dictated by a logical method, rather its appropriateness is determined by the actual requirements of an analysis of empirical reality. In the first edition of his excellent little book "What is this thing called science?", Alan F. Chalmers was still an Althusserian, but in the subsequent editions he removed the Althusserian part. That's quite correct, because Althusserianism isn't science, at best only theory. What Althusser wanted to do is attack empiricism, and he ends up with theoreticism. But why does he attack empiricism? Quite simply because the facts of experience contradict the theory, and he wants to keep the theory. But that is just to say "I don't know how to develop my theory so that it explains, that those things which appear to contradict it in reality, are really quite consistent with the theory". Compare this to Marx's discussion of the law of value: "if one wanted to 'explain' from the outset all phenomena that apparently contradict the law, one would have to provide the science before the science." And that is exactly what Althusser does: he wants to provide the science before he has actually done any. Jurriaan
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