>>> Ted Winslow
As Marx hinself points out, his treatment of the "labour process" as "basic" sublates Hegel.
"The outstanding achievement of Hegel’s Phänomenologie and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self- creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objective man – true, because real man – as the outcome of man’s own labour. The real, active orientation of man to himself as a species-being, or his manifestation as a real species-being (i.e., as a human being), is only possible if he really brings out all his species-powers – something which in turn is only possible through the cooperative action of all of mankind, only as the result of history – and treats these powers as objects: and this, to begin with, is again only possible in the form of estrangement." <http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm>
^^^ CB: So according to Marx, the alienation and estrangement of class divided society is a necessary step in the process of fully and universally developing rationally self-conscious human "individuals", no ? Those individual personalities or characters that are necessary for communism.
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"Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political economy. [47] He grasps labour as the essence of man – as man’s essence which stands the test: he sees only the positive, not the negative side of labour. Labour is man’s coming-to-be for himself within alienation, or as alienated man." <http://www.marx.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm>
According to Marx, what human being becomes through "labour" (in the successive internally related forms it takes in the historical process of "bildung" that make these successive forms "stages in the development of the human mind") ^^^^ CB; Western Civilizational Mind, anyway.
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is the rationally self-conscious "universally developed individual," i.e. the "Divine Being" Hegel elaborates as "the unity of the universal and individual."
This being has the fully developed "powers" required to actualize universal ethical principles in the relations that constitute "mutual recognition."
^^^ CB: Since it is labour that plays a key role in this development, would we expect to find most of these universally developed and rationally self-conscious individuals most capable of mutual recognition in the working class ?
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Such actualization constitutes what Hegel and Marx mean by "freedom."
^^^ CB: Marx also means by "freedom" what is possible in the Realm of Freedom as opposed to the Realm of Necessity.
"Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
Marx, published by Engels Capital, Volume III (1894)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htm
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Though it has largely disappeared from "Marxism," this developmental idea is the essence of Marx's treatment of capitalism.
According to him, the capitalist labour process develops in the individuals subjected to it the "powers" and will required to initiate the "revolutionary praxis" (itself a form of "labour" understood as developmental in Hegel's sense) that then further develops individual "powers" to the degree necessary to enable the individuals engaged in it to "appropriate" the "productive forces" (understood as objectifications of mind) developed within capitalism and use them to create the penultimate social form from which all barriers to full human development have been removed.
Marx's understanding of the capitalist labour process as a process of "bildung" in this sense is badly flawed, but not in the way Rose appears to suggest.
One such flaw is the "mathematical" falling rate of profit argument.
^^^ CB: Please elaborate.
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Even here, however, Marx is aware of the limitations an internal relations ontology places on the applicability of axiomatic deductive (including "mathematical") reasoning. The "labour theory of value" underpinning the argument requires the sublation of another aspect of Hegel's sublation of classical political economy's treatment of "labour," the idea of labour as "alienated" labour.
"But by the same token the abstraction of labour makes man more mechanical and dulls his mind and his senses. Mental vitality, a fully aware, fulfilled life degenerates into empty activity. The strength of the self manifests itself in a rich, comprehensive grasp of life; this is now lost. He can hand over some work to the machine; but his own actions become correspondingly more formal. His dull labour limits him to a single point and the work becomes more and more perfect as it becomes more and more one-sided.... No less incessant is the frenetic search for new methods of simplifying work, new machines etc. The individual’s skill ‘s his method of preserving his own existence. ^^^ CB: "the individual's skill's ?? his methods..." ?
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The latter is subject to the web of chance which enmeshes the whole. Thus a vast number of people are condemned to utterly brutalising, unhealthy and unreliable labour in workshops, factories and mines, labour which narrows and reduces their skill. Whole branches of industry which maintain a large class of people can suddenly wither away at the dictates of fashion, or a fall in prices following new inventions in other countries, etc. And this entire class is thrown into the depths of poverty where it can no longer help itself. We see the emergence of great wealth and great poverty, poverty which finds it impossible to produce anything for itself." ^^^^ CB: How is it that the law of the tenedency
(Hegel, as quoted by Lukacs in "Hegel’s economics during the Jena period" in The Young Hegel) <http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/youngheg/lukacs35.htm>
^^^^ CB: How is it that the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is not instructive concerning the types of events that Hegel describes impressionistically here. As Marx says "...the economic conditions of production... can be determined with the precision of natural science..." i.e. with mathematical precision
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
Were it not "alienated" labour it would lack the homogeneity necessary for the applicability of the "labour theory of value." This is one of the reasons this theory is inapplicable in a ideal community where "labour" is no longer "alienated," but is the activity of universally developed individuals freely associated in relations of mutual recognition in the "realm of necessity."
Because, among other reasons, of the relevance of internal relations, the rest of Marx's treatment of the historical process of "bildung," including the role played in the process by the "passions," can't be represented mathematically.
Ted
CB: Yea, concerning "passions",
"In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out."
CB:"Passions" are part of " the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out", contrasted in this passage with economic conditions of production which can be rendered mathematically precise. In other words, the implication in this passion is, as you say, passions can't be rendered with mathematical precision.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society."
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