--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:
>I guess further, why is it important to you that Marx
>didn't consider that "reality" is dialectical ?
Charles,
I don't think Marx is trying to assert that physical reality is organized according to the dialectic. I think perhaps (my interpretation, influenced by Anselm Jappe's book Die Abenteuer der Ware, if I am remembering his arguments correctly) is that the value form represents an inversion of subjectivity, because instead of human beings consciously shaping and forming their social world, the social world of commodity society is instead organized according to the law of value.
But the law of value is not an independently existing reality, but rather emerges from the fact that humans relate to the products of their labor as commodities intended for exchange, and the law of value asserts itself "behind the backs" of social actors, even though humans themselves are ultimately the creators of this social world.
I am against, however, arguments that try to say dialectic is some underlying principle of physical reality. And I don't think Marx thought this. I know this view is commonly attributed to Engels, but I have not read the Anti-Dühring (or much of anything by Engels, to be honest, other than the work on the peasant wars).
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