http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/message/3370 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/message/3356 Received: 2/27/01 4:10:04 AM From: Pabs47 at Hotmail.com To: marxist at yahoogroups.com CC: Subject: [marxist] Critical Realism, Pragmatism and Marxism
I was surprised to see my short letter on Bhaskar, ontology and Marxism, (published in the CPGB's Weekly Worker) posted on this list.
But then such is the causal generative power of the Web.
Phil Walden makes some interesting and sueful points which I would like to comment on - particularly as the Marxist list is a forum for such discussions.
Firstly, the debate about the relationship between philosophy and marxism has been a source of debate for over a century and it is sueful to start off with some fairly bald assertions. Althusser's most famous claim (in Lire le Capital) appears to me a good way of staking out a 'minimalist' realist perspective. That is, the 'real object' is the centre of historical materialism's efforts to 'reproduce the concrete in thought'. His latter work, in for example, Philosophie Comme Arme de revolution, that philosophy, and the Marxist class struggle in theory, is a post- facto elaboration of scientific discoveries, is not 'pragmatic' (that is, based on what 'works'), but in line with this minimalism. Most importantly, any ontological reconstruction of a scientific problematic is dependent on that combination of a) minimal realism (the real object is independent of thought) and b) the recognition that new real objects can be discovered (epistemological break - eg Marx's discovery of the Continent of History) with different ontological properties.
Secondly, Bhaskar attempted to 'stand Kant on his head' by deducing the categories of being (causal necessity as arranged in generative mechanism - combinations of tendential powers), Applied to social objects (in The Possibility of Naturalism) the enduring nature of social relations and other emergent properties of social bonds are held to justify the use of a common set of metaphysical categories with natural science (though recognising the difference in objects, notably space-time limitations in social objects). This proceudre seems to me to do precisely what I 'asserted'. Namely, having deduced one set of causal concepts (natural pwoers-tendencies), from the scientific objects in A Realist Theory of Science, Bhaskar's critical realism uses them as a 'grid' to interpret the nature of social objects. A similar procedure is used to strengthen a concept of causal intentionality inside human agents - another 'invisible' aetiology deduced purely conceptually the debate around Donald Davidson and later (in Bhaskar's book on Richard Rorty) on modern pragmatism.
Thirdly, these purely conceptual deductions of ontological relations are only dymaic in the sense that they are premised on concepts carrying the label'I am dynamic'. In reality they are derivative from the purely philsophical discourse on causation that Phil cites. A Hegelian or Dia-Mat tradition has it that all philosophy is both transcended (aufhebung) and preserved by dialectics. I am more sceptical (in fact wholly sceptical about dialectics altogether), How Aristotle's concepts of formal, material, efficient and final causes are anything more than a verbal reconstruction if used outside his own ontology (eg the Unmoved Mover, is not clear. Causal relations in society have yet to find an adequate conceptualisation, but I would suggest they would proceed in a fashion similar to Althusser's structures (though not his own doctrine of structural causation - causa sui - which has been used as another 'grid').
Fourthly, that Bhaskar's critical relaism can be used a s a 'grid', or way of assesing the 'scientificity' of social studies can be seen in recent issues of Historical Materialism. As a 'model' of social scientitific procedure it happens to coincide with some aspects of Marxsim (eg real and phenomenal relations). But this kind of reasoning could also be employed to support theories of 'occult' relations of other kinds (eg conspiracy theories about the Illuminati - the 'real relations' behind 'appearances'). In short, the ontology is both too general to be a way of demaracating the 'scientificity' of tconcrete studies and too specficic (with its encouragement of an over-abundant repetoire of concepts circulating around the central one of Generative Mechanism).
Fifthly, and finally, Bhaskar defiend his own work as that of a Lockean 'underlabourer'. The reason I dismissed Dialectics is because it contained all the above tendencies to expand his metaphysics to labour on social and scientific objects in general. As a result it is not the easiest book to read - and I certainly would not place it high on my list of Marxist philosophy texts (but then neither would Negative Dialectics be there).
Anyway, enough for now,
Andrew Coates
"[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." --Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31
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