> Michael wrote:
>
> >I recollect Draper suggesting that class 'in itself'/'for itself'
> >formulation is Hegelian residue in Marx,
>
> and Jim replied:
>
> >>Yes, and he could have added Kantian, too - but then that would be no
> bad thing <<
>
> below, a passage from Balibar's "In search of the proletariat: the notion
> of class politics in Marx", _Masses, Classes, Ideas_, pp. 135-36. The
> essay is an interesting and i think careful reading of the uses of
> 'proletariat', 'masses' and 'class' in Marx's writings. I'd cite the parts
> more relevant to this if i hadn't lent my book out, but the following might
> give an idea of the ways in which he would see the above issues.
Angela, while I would agree that many Marxists think they can master the political game (put in another way, they think they can hold the activity of history within their party), I am not so sure that Marx thought in these terms. And definitely, there is nothing in Marx's writings that forces one to think in those terms.
Put another way, the idea that the world can be 'captured' in theory, and the development of history can be 'modelled' in theory is a necessary component of the idea that you've mastered the game of politics, and is contrary to Marx. Here's Marx from the Grundrisse, the section on the method of political economy, after he has developed a brief description and critique of philosophy (and its most complete form - Hegel):
"The totality as it appears in the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the artistic, religious, practical and mental [geistlich - i.e. spiritual or psychological] appropriation of this world. The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head's conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society, must always be kept in mind as the presupposition."
Note that 'the real subject retains its autonomous existence', and 'society must be kept in mind as the presupposition'. Society needs to be 'kept in mind' not because it needs to be incorporated as some 'basis' for theory, but precisely because Marx realises that it escapes theory. Keeping society in mind here cannot mean anything but a practical process - a process which necessitates intervention, sensing, acting - refusing to remain 'merely speculative'.
Also, while Balibar is right - you can only play with the concepts that you are given - he fails to see precisely what Marx saw - at some point, your 'playing with concepts' breaks outside the bounds of those concepts. Marx might, for instance, dialectically overturn both Lasalle and Bakunin, but that is precisely what the working class of Paris does in the Commune. What is the Commune? Is it a state, or is it not a state? Balibar's description looks like what Yoshie calls 'left Hegelianism' - a constant ping-ponging from catagory to catagory, never seeing how catagories can dissolve, how oppositions can be overcome - never seeing this, because it operates in the domain of philosophy (Hegel), rather than operating beyond philosophy (Marx).
The failure of the Russian Revolution - and the defence of the Soviet state - shattered Marxism in a way similar to the way the French revolution shattered the Englightenment. Just as in the battles of Paris, freedom ceased to be a mere philosophical concept, and forced bourgeois philosophy to face up to - and then bury - what freedom meant in practice, so in the history of the Russian Revolution Marxism (and by Marxism I mean a specific thing - the Marxism which developed from Karl Kautsky and Georg Plekhanov - the Marxism of the 2nd International) had to face up to what the negation of the negation - the human who continous to exist outside the most complete theory - meant - and Marxism (in both its Stalinist, and Trotskyist varients) buried the human rather than confront itself.
When theory (philosophy) perceives itself, it perceives that the subject is absent in itself. Marx saw this. Marx, however, also saw that this is only a problem if you stand on theory - if you try and craft yourself as a theoretical being. Marx, however, stood not on theory, but on human existence. (Well, if Marx didn't quite do this from time to time, we should endeavour to do it always.) Marx sought to multiply not organisation - more and more organisation of working people - but human emancipatory activity. Both the 'diamat' attempts to capture history within a 'programme', and the left Hegelian attempts to comprehend theory within a school of philosophers are inadaquate to the task that Marx set himself.
Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx
NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.