> Now there might be a way of finding them aside from my very unpopular
> ontological approach, in fact, there is, but it involves self-criticism and
> taking apart concepts which we have assumed to be true but may not be - there
> is at least this bit of theory that needs to be done and that as I hope this
> illustration suggests, is a practical thing to do given our collective
> impasse.
>
> I believe intellectual self-criticism presumes an ontology, but there is no
> real need to go down this route. But no matter how things are looked at some
> real self-criticism needs to be done.
I suggest you just get on with making your ontological points Greg.
I read Marx as taking over from Hegel the conception of history as a set of internally related stages in the development of rational self-consciousness.
Even the "materialist" aspect of this, the emphasis on "sensuous consciousness" and the role assigned to labour within particular internal relations of production in the development of self-consciousness, has an antecedent in Hegel, namely in Hegel's account in the Phenomenology of role of the master/slave relation in the development of a degree of rational self-consciousness in the slave. This makes the master/slave labour process "contradictory" in the sense that the change in the slave's consciousness - the slave's subjectivity - is inconsistent with the continued existence of the master/slave relation.
"The recognition [Erkennung] of its products as its own, and the judgement that its separation from the conditions of its realization is improper - forcibly imposed - is an enormous [advance in] awareness [Bewusstsein], itself the product of the mode of production resting on capital, and as much the knell to its doom as, with the slave's awareness that he cannot be the property of another, with his consciousness of himself as a person, the existence of slavery becomes a merely artificial, vegetative existence, and ceases to be able to prevail as the basis of production." (Grundrisse, p. 463)
It seems to me, however, that Marx fails to explain how the capitalist labour process works to develop in wage workers the degree of rational self-consciousness that enables them to become the "architects" of a higher social form.
In fact, his claims about the effects of that process on workers are inconsistent with the role he assigns them. The lengthening of the working day, the intensification of work, the tendency of real wages to fall, etc. etc. would not produce conditions in which the kind of consciousness required could develop.
However, these results are themselves reached by means of what seems to me to be mistaken reasoning. The argument claiming to demonstrate a tendency of the rate of profit to fall, for instance, is not persuasive. Putting aside the question as to whether it requires an arbitrary assumption about future changes in technology, it's an instance of Marx falling victim to the Ricardian vice, an attempt to reach conclusions about the the long-run future by means of a long chain of deductive reasoning from fixed axioms. For reasons I've pointed to before, this is in invalid form of reasoning where, as in the case of social phenomena and as Marx himself assumes, internal relations are insufficiently stable to satisfy the presuppositions which its valid application requires.
If a better society requires that most people both consciously desire it and know how to bring it into being, then its creation presupposes the development of the degree of rational self-consciousness this would require. Marx's explanation of how this development is brought about is unpersuasive.
Ted