From: Ian Hunt (ian.hunt@FLINDERS.EDU.AU)
Date: Tue Nov 13 2007 - 01:31:10 EST
I am not sure I follow all of your 'editorializing'. I give an account of dialectical connection (a bit like Ollman's, I guess, but also sharing something in common with Levin and Lewontin - the original version of "The Dialectical Biologist" came out in 1985, I suppose the new one is revised) in Ch 4 of my book "Analytical and Dialectical Marxism", Cheers, Ian >Oh just some editorializing... > >>>I am just raising the hoary question of what role Marx's specific >>>understanding of dialectic (logical and historical) and especially >>>contradiction play in or distinguish his theory. >>It seems that you are saying a very important one, no? >>Well, yes. >>Cheers, >>Ian > >My hero Grossman downplayed influence of Hegel on Marx in 1943, >saying that Marx's understanding of the historical dialectic depended >on Condorcet, Sismondi, Jones. Though if I remember correctly there >may be a favorable and hidden footnote on the importance of Hegel's >logic for Marx's categorial analysis. And there is that fabulous, >key, perhaps though not coherent quote in which Marx says that JS >Mill, comfortable with logical contradictions, is at bay with real >dialectical contradiction whose source is Hegel. > >And certainly when Grossman in 1941 insists that Marx did not >complete but actually revolutionized Ricardo's value theory, he seems >to suggest (with nowhere the clarity of Ilyenkov who himself is vague >often enough) the importance of Marx's ability to grasp the unity of >opposites--in the commodity itself and as externalized in the value >form, in the accumulation process as a unity of technical and value >processes, in the opposite use value and unit value effects of rising >productivity. > >To put it roughly would you say your sense of dialectical logic is >close to Levins and Lewontin's (just ordered their new book from >Monthly Review)? >Lukacs would of course put emphasis inter alia on Marx's ability to >theorize capitalism as a totality, in terms of carefully specified >connections or what (according to Chris Arthur) Ollman would call >inner-action among parts. > >Marx himself put great emphasis on the aesthetic wholeness of >Capital, as I have underlined in discussion with Fred. I think he >means here not only the exhaustive specification of the parts of the >totality (a pure and idealized bourgeois mode of production) and >their interconnections as spelled out in a layered way but the >dramatic history he gave of this totality (the drama of its origins, >rise and fall--such a drama contrasted here to episodic histories of >parts, which Foucault would do much to resurrect the respectability >of). > >The drama however is a fictional one. Society is not the capitalist >totality, and the parts specified were either not necessary >(commodity money) or exhaustive (missing book on the state?market in >govt debt? limited liability corporation?). > >And Marx may or may have abstracted from the background of the world >market. I don't think so (as I, along with Kenneth Lapides, do think >Marx more or less finished the book he intended to write after he >dumped the six book plan), but most people (Michael Heinrich >prominently) on this list do think Marx did abstract away from the >world market. > >But one can say the method of analyzing the totality remains >defensible? Of course one could say that and say that there is >nothing specifically Marxist about such a method. > >But the most important point: Rick Kuhn won the Deutscher prize for >his marvelous book on Grossman. > >Rakesh -- Associate Professor Ian Hunt, Dept of Philosophy, School of Humanities, Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Flinders University of SA, Humanities Building, Bedford Park, SA, 5042, Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784
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