Putting Dialectics to Work: The Process of Abstraction in Marx's Method
I. The Problem: How to Think Adequately about Change and Interaction
Is there any part of Marxism that has received more abuse than his dialectical method? And I am not just thinking about enemies of Marxism and socialism, but also about scholars who are friendly to both. It is not Karl Popper, but George Sorel in his Marxist incarnation who refers to dialectics as "the art of reconciling opposites through hocus pocus," and the English socialist economist, Joan Robinson, who on reading Capital objects to the constant intrusion of "Hegel's nose" between her and Ricardo (Sorel, 1950, 171: Robinson, 1953, 23). But perhaps the classic complaint is fashioned by the American philosopher, William James, who compares reading about dialectics in Hegel-it could just as well have been Marx-to getting sucked into a whirlpool (1978, 174).
Yet other thinkers have considered Marx's dialectical method among his most important contributions to socialist theory, and Lukacs goes so far as to claim that orthodox Marxism relies solely upon adherence to his method (1971, 1). Though Lukacs may be exaggerating to make his point, it is not-- in my view--by very much. The reasons for such widespread disagreement on the meaning and value of dialectics are many, but what stands out is the inadequate attention given to the nature of its subject matter. What, in other words, is dialectics about? What questions does it deal with, and why are they important? Until there is more clarity, if not consensus, on its basic task, treatises on dialectics will succeed only in piling one layer of obscurity upon another. So this is where we must begin.
First and foremost, and stripped of all qualifications added by this or that dialectician, the subject of dialectics is change, all change, and interaction, all kinds and degrees of interaction. This is not to say that dialectical thinkers recognize the existence of change and interaction, while non-dialectical thinkers do not. That would be foolish. Everyone recognizes that everything in the world changes, somehow and to some degree, and that the same holds true for interaction.
The problem is how to think adequately about them, how to capture them in thought. How, in other words, can we think about change and interaction so as not to miss or distort the real changes and interactions that we know, in a general way at least, are there (with all the implications this has for how to study them and to communicate what we find to others)? This is the key problem addressed by dialectics, this is what all dialectics is about, and it is in helping to resolve this problem that Marx turns to the process of abstraction.
II. The Solution Lies in the Process of Abstraction
In his most explicit statement on the subject, Marx claims that his method starts from the "real concrete" (the world as it presents itself to us) and proceeds through "abstraction" (the intellectual activity of breaking this whole down into the mental units with which we think about it) to the "thought concrete" (the reconstituted and now understood whole present in the mind) (1904, 293-94). The real concrete is simply the world in which we live, in all its complexity. The thought concrete is Marx's reconstruction of that world in the theories of what has come to be called "Marxism." The royal road to understanding is said to Pass from the one to the other through the process of abstraction.
In one sense, the role Marx gives to abstraction is simple recognition of the fact that all thinking about reality begins by breaking it down into manageable parts. Reality may be in one piece when lived, but to be thought about and communicated it must be parceled out. our minds can no more swallow the world whole at one sitting than can our stomachs. Everyone then, and not just Marx and Marxists, begins the task of trying to make sense of his or her surroundings by distinguishing certain features and focusing on and organizing them in ways deemed appropriate. "Abstract" comes from the Latin, abstrahere, which means "to pull from." In effect, a piece has been pulled from or taken out of the whole and is temporarily perceived as standing apart.
We "see" only some of what lies in front of us, "hear" only part of the noises in our vicinity, "feel" only a small part of what our body is in contact with, and so on through the rest of our senses. In each case, a focus is established and a kind of boundary set within our perceptions distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. It should be clear that "What did you see?" (What caught your eye?) is a different question from "What did you actually see?" (What came into your line of vision?). Likewise, in thinking about any subject, we focus on only some of its qualities and relations. Much that could be included-that may in fact be included in another person's view or thought, and may on another occasion be included in our own-is left out. The mental activity involved in establishing such boundaries, whether conscious or unconscious--though it is usually an amalgam of both--is the process of abstraction.
Responding to a mixture of influences that include the material world and our experiences in it as well as to personal wishes, group interests, and other social constraints, it is the process of abstraction that establishes the specificity of the objects with which we interact. In setting boundaries, in ruling this far and no further, it is what makes something one (or two. or more) of a kind, and lets us know where that kind begins and ends. With this decision as to units, we also become committed to a particular set of relations between them--relations made possible and even necessary by the qualities that we have included in each--a register for classifying them, and a mode for explaining them.
In listening to a concert, for example, we often concentrate on a single instrument or recurring theme and then redirect our attention elsewhere. Each time this occurs, the whole music alters, new patterns emerge, each sound takes on a different value, etc. How we understand the music is largely determined by how we abstract it. The same applies to what we focus on when watching a play, whether on a person, or a combination of persons, or a section of the stage. The meaning of the play and what more is required to explore or test this meaning alters, often dramatically. with each new abstraction. In this way, too, how we abstract literature. where we draw the boundaries, determines what works and what parts of each work will be studied, with what methods, in relation to what other subjects, in what order, and even by whom. Abstracting literature to include its audience, for example, leads to a sociology of literature, while an abstraction of literature that excludes everything but its forms calls forth various structural approaches, and so on.
From what has been said so far, it is clear that "abstraction" is itself an abstraction. I have abstracted it from Marx's dialectical method, which in turn was abstracted from his broad theories, which in turn were abstracted from his life and work. The mental activities that we have collected and brought into focus as "abstraction" are more often associated with the processes of perception, conception, defining, reasoning, and even think ing. It is not surprising, therefore, if the process of abstraction strikes many people as both foreign and familiar at the same time. Each of these more familiar processes operate in part by separating out, focusing, and putting emphasis on only some aspects of that reality with which they come into contact. In "abstraction," we have simply separated out, focused, and put emphasis on certain common features of these other processes. Abstracting "abstraction" in this way is neither easy nor obvious, and therefore few people have done it. Consequently, though everyone abstracts, of necessity, only a few are aware of it as such. This forced by the fact that most people philosophical impoverishment is rein mental units are lazy abstractors, simply and uncritically accepting the with which they think as part of their cultural inheritance.
A further complication in grasping " abstraction" arises from the fact that Marx uses the term in three different, though closely related, senses. First, and most important, it refers to the mental activity of subdividing the world into the mental constructs with which we think about it, which is the process that we have been describing. Second, it refers to the results apportioned. of this process, the actual parts into which reality has been. That is to say, for Marx, as for Hegel before him, "abstraction" functions as a noun as well as a verb, the noun referring to what the verb has brought into being. In these senses, everyone can be said to abstract (verb) and to think with abstractions (noun). But Marx also uses "abstraction" in a third sense, where it refers to a suborder of particularly ill fitting mental constructs. Whether because they are too narrow, take in too little, focus too exclusively on appearances, or are otherwise badly composed, these constructs do not allow an adequate grasp of their subject matter.
Taken in this third sense, abstractions are the basic unit of ideology, the inescapable ideational result of living and working in alienated society. "Freedom," for example, is said to be such an abstraction whenever we remove the real individual from "the conditions of existence within which these individuals enter into contact" (1973, 164). Omitting the conditions that make freedom possible (or impossible)-including the real alternatives available, the role of money, the socialization of the person choosing, etc.--from the meaning of "freedom" leaves a notion that can only distort and obfuscate even that part of reality it sets out to convey. A lot of Marx's criticism of ideology makes use of this sense of "abstraction," as when he says that people in capitalist society are "ruled by abstractions" (1973,164). Such remarks, of which there are a great many in his writings, however, must not keep us from seeing that Marx also abstracts in the first sense given above and, like everyone else, thinks with abstractions in the second sense, and that the particular way in which he does both goes a long way in accounting for the distinctive character of Marxism.
Despite several explicit remarks on the centrality of abstraction in Marx's work, the process of abstraction has received relatively little attention in the literature on Marxism. Serious work on Marx's dialectical method can usually be distinguished on the basis of which of the categories belonging to the vocabulary of dialectics is treated as pivotal. For Lukacs, it was the concept of "totality" that played this role (1971); for Mao, it was "contradiction" (1968); for Raya Dunavevskaya, it was the "negation of negation" (1982); for Scott Meikle, it was "essence" (1985); for the Ollman of Alienation, it was "internal relations", and so on (I 976). Even when abstraction is discussed--and no serious work dismisses it altogether--the main emphasis is generally on what it is in the world or in history or in Marx's research into one or the other that is responsible for the particular abstractions made, and not on the process of abstraction as such, on what exactly he does and how he does it.' Consequently, the implications of Marx's abstracting practice for the theories of Marxism remain clouded, and those wishing to develop these theories and where necessary revise them receive little help in their efforts to abstract in the manner of Marx. In what follows, it is just this process of abstraction, how it works and particularly how Marx works it, that serves as the centerpiece for our discussion of dialectics.
III. How Marx's Abstractions Differ <SNIP>