Tahir Wood quoted Rose interpreting Marx:
> There is no idea of a vocation which may be assimilated or re-formed
> by the determinations or law which it fails to acknowledge or the
> strength which it underestimates. Because Marx did not relate
> actuality to representation and subjectivity, his account of
> structural change in capitalism is abstractly related to possible
> change in consciousness. This resulted in gross oversimplification
> regarding the likelihood and the inhibition of change. This is not
> the argument that Marx’s predictions about the conditions of the
> formation of revolutionary consciousness were wrong. It is an
> argument to the effect that the very concept of consciousness and, a
> fortiori, of revolutionary consciousness, are insufficiently
> established in Marx.
This appears to be a misinterpretation.
Tahir: Of whom or what? Do you mean a general lack of understanding of Marx and Hegel (which I find unlikely), or do you mean misinterpretation of a certain text or texts? Not clear, even from what follows.
As Marx hinself points out, his treatment of the "labour process" as "basic" sublates Hegel.
Tahir: Of course he says this, because this is what he intended. Rose is claiming that he does not do this as successfully as perhaps he intended or as his followers thought.
"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>
"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>
Tahir: Without wanting to deny Marx's point here, this does not mean that everything in Hegel becomes dispensable. But this is precisely what a lot of Marx's utterances seem to suggest. I have long been one of those who has reservations about one particular instance of that, namely the 11th thesis. It is simply not true that philosophers have only interpreted the world without changing it. The French revolution and its banners and slogans are evidence of that. Hegel is not above critique, obviously, but I would argue that that is not the same thing as saying that because he has been 'sublated' he (and indeed all other philosophers) can be dispensed with. I think there are obvious dangers in that and I'm with Rose solidly on that one. The whole point of a critical marxism that she makes is that the transition from Hegel to Marx is one that must be thought through more carefully if one is not to underestimate the Hegelian notion of actuality and its importance for a revolutionary consciousness.
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") 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." Such actualization constitutes what Hegel and Marx mean by "freedom."
Though it has largely disappeared from "Marxism," this developmental idea is the essence of Marx's treatment of capitalism.
Tahir: And Rose argues that this developmental idea, the re-formation of consciousness, is insufficiently developed in Marx. The lesssons of history are there. If Hegel is correct in his central point, that concept must be reconciled with intuition, this implies that any notion of revolution from above is doomed to failure, because it will impose the concept upon an untransformed consciousness. This can only lead to the imposition of 'socialism' by state terror and the quasi-permanent monopoly by the state of the means of violence. But this cannot have anything at all to do with either communism or with absolute ethical life. This is the hard pill to swallow and the historical significance of Leninism (and What is to be Done in particular). Korsch was correct to say that marxism on its own could not provide a programme for transition to communism, as, for example, Bordiga believed. He reckoned rather that the anarchist critique of statism would be vital. He was right and it was that most un-anarchistic figure of Hegel who makes it clear to me why this is so. Charles B. asks in another message what is my view of the role of the state in a transition to socialism. I say that its role can only be negative. It exists as a limit to be overcome, not as an instrument to be wielded by the communists. There is no such thing as a proletarian state, and if there were all it would turn out to be is a reign of terror under the convenient banner of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.
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.
Tahir: Is this something that is already determined, a predetermined course of events? If so then it is a bad teleology. Let's take another example, that of the 'general intellect'. Marx appears to be saying in the 'Fragment on Machines' that the application of science and technology which brings about the transition from the formal to the real subsumption of labour has within itself the potential to create a revolutionary consciousness. But this is not necessarily the case. There is just no necessary causal link between 'technological literacy' as it tends to be called and the formation of a non-capitalist type of consciousness. Again we have the benefit of hindsight to see this, to see how things have actually turned out.
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. 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.
Tahir: This example is not relevant to her argument, which is about bildung as the successive re-formations of consciousness. This is the significantly Hegelian contribution, which I do not find 'sublated' in Marx in the way you suggest. And I think there is a reason for this: Marx's polemic against hegelianism as a polemic of materialism against idealism. I think this distinction is overstated in Marx and overrated by marxists.
"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. 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." (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>
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."
Tahir: Again you seem to be presupposing that the very fact that this is posited in Marx means that it will come about. And you seem to think that because Hegel could not see 'beyond the horizons of capitalism', as Lukacs puts it, therefore Marx's formulation is not just superior but also sufficient in itself. In other words, because Marx could in fact see beyond those horizons means necessarily that those horizons will be transcended in practice, not just in theory. But that is precisely what is in question, how this 'ideal community' might come about and what the role of consciousness in bringing about that reality might be. But this ideal community that you refer to -- your choice of words is slightly ironic -- must be a system of ethical life if it is not to consist purely in state power, and that is where Hegel remains relevant. BTW I do not think Lukacs, especially not in his 'marxist-leninist' phase circa 1938, is an entirely reliable guide through all of this. See also Rose's critique of Lukacs in Hegel Contra Sociology, under the heading of 'Neo-Kantian Marxism', and elsewhere.
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.
Tahir: More specifically which 'treatment' do you have in mind here? Not sure, so can't comment.
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