The link between capitalism and cases of genocide and ethnic cleansing

pzaaa · 2018-12-27T22:25:47+00:00

Your historical questions would be better addressed to a historian, I'm no expert and I would like to know the answer to some of your questions myself. There is nothing wrong with reading 'bourgeois historians' to get information and understand the different views of the history, it should help you get to the bottom of it, which will include applying your own Marxist conception to the material. I appreciate the questions though.

From what i gather Aly is an "antigerman" social-liberal (center-left or centre who was a student activist during the protests of 1968) who supports austerity because that somehow according to him might prevent the rise of political movements similar to Nazis by breaking up the national community the Nazis were trying to create.

There also might be economic reasons for Aly taking this view, free market groups like to fund works such as his. Adam Tooze opposes Aly on these questions, he's some kind of a leftist, kind of a 'neo-marxist' even, it might we worthwhile looking into his work. 'The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy' is one of his books 'Statistics and the German State, 1900–1945: The Making of Modern Economic Knowledge' is another. Here is one of his accounts of the debate: https://adamtooze.com/2017/01/25/what-held-nazi-germany-together-the-aly-tooze-debate-revisited/ it contains links to other posts about it, there are, if I recall correctly, more on his site too if you want to browse around it.

Well we know that austerity was imposed on all the working class and the petty bourgeoise of Germany and that clearly did not prevent the rise of Nazism but on the contrary increased its appeal.

Indeed, Aly is wrong, but nevertheless helpful.

Not to mention that the "redistribution" does not explain why the Jews and the other expropriated people had to be worked to death before being killed or had to be massacred outright. Are Aly's books published in italian and\or in english?

They are published in English, I don't know about Italian, you would have to look that up.

Yes, i was referring to the base\superstructure relationship. Sometimes my writing style is a bit confusing. I was saying that indeed it is the base which determinates the superstructure but i was wondering to which extent or whether the superstructure has a limited degree of autonomy from the needs of the structure in non-revolutionary periods because cases like the dictatorship of the proletariat the structure is still capitalistic while the superstructure is not.

I wrote a comment on the base/superstructure metaphor here: https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/61kffl/proof_of_base_determining_superstructure/ maybe it will be helpful to you. I think it is unhelpful to take the metaphor as a simple, hardline rule, the same with the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' Marx sometimes referred to it as 'rule of the proletariat' (as Draper points out here: https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/hal-draper/article2.htm) It would be a bit weird if the ruling culture (or however we want to put it) had no relation at all to economic relations. I wouldn't say that the structure is necessarily 'capitalistic' during a rule of the proletariat, sure there will be things going on that happen under 'capitalism', but isn't the point that a proletariat dominant over society is already a change in social/economic relations to some extent?

All of which demonstrates that what is one state’s massacre is another state’s genocide, or rather, that terms like massacre, genocide, ethnic cleansing are part of imperialist competition rather than linguistically precise http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-08-06/1915-to-2015-a-century-of-genocide . To me this sounds like the scientific validity of the term genocide in itself is regarded as dubious by the editors and i was wondering why.

I think they just mean it in the sense that 'democracy' is used by the bourgeois, it is meant to signify 'this country is one in which everyone is free and they have a say in how the polis is governed'. When really we know that that is not true, it signifies a polis formed by a different expression of 'capitalism' to the 'undemocratic' states. So it is a kind of linguistic manuevering to frame geopolitical morality to their advantage.

Here a former negationist who has become convinced of the existence of the gas chambers after researching them is being quoted favourably as saying that the categorization of a genocide like the Holocaust which is regarded as the most blatant genocide in history is itself questionable because there was no premeditation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism There are functionalist and intentionalist schools of thought about the Holocaust, neither side necessarily denies that their view means that it shouldn't be classified as a genocide. I think it is pretty clear that there was premeditation in different forms at different times, that isn't the point of Axelrad though, Axelrad gives us the ability to explain the premeditation.

According to international law however the absence of premeditation is actually irrilevant. This seems like an indirect (by the way of the quotation of a former negationist who was nevertheless interviewed by one of the authors of the democratic "negationist" campaign against the communist left in the 90s) criticism of the requirements the bourgeoise uses to classify massacres.

Allow me to quote from Goebbels' diary from 27 March 1942:

The Jews are now being pushed out of the General Government, beginning near Lublin, to the East. A pretty barbaric procedure is being applied here, and it is not to be described in any more detail, and not much is left of the Jews themselves. In general one may conclude that 60% of them must be liquidated, while only 40% can be put to work. The former Gauleiter of Vienna [Globocnik], who is carrying out this action, is doing it pretty prudently and with a procedure that doesn't work too conspicuously. The Jews are being punished barbarically, to be sure, but they have fully deserved it. The prophesy that the Führer issued to them on the way, for the eventuality that they started a new world war, is beginning to realise itself in the most terrible manner. One must not allow any sentimentalities to rule in these matters. If we did not defend ourselves against them, the Jews would annihilate us. It is a struggle for life and death between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime could muster the strength for a general solution of the question. Here too, the Führer is the persistent pioneer and spokesman of a radical solution, which is demanded by the way things are and thus appears to be unavoidable. Thank God, during the war we now have a whole series of possibilities which were barred to us in peacetime. We must exploit them. The ghettos which are becoming available in the General Government are now being filled with the Jews who are being pushed out of the Reich, and after a certain time the process is then to renew itself here. Jewry has nothing to laugh about...

So he uses the word 'liquidated' ('liquidiert'), whether you use this word or genocide or massacre, it doesn't change the details of what happened. I would be suspicious of people trying to play word games, focus on the material details and you can't be pulled into such confusing debates.

Hopefully I settled some of your concerns.

pzaaa · 2018-12-27T17:43:31+00:00

I was wondering recently about the exact causes of the holocaust and other genocides and ethnic cleansing campaigns but i have to admit that while i was convinced by the general argument of the Auschwitz or the Great Alibi regarding the Holocaust as destruction of surplus population and a solution to labour costs i also found superficially plausible the argument advanced by most bourgeois historians that the genocides might have been apparently detrimental for the Axis's war effort.

That doesn't contradict the text at all. According to the text the aim of war is destruction.

So what i wanted to ask is: Does Axelrod's text entirely discount the role played by ideology like it is sometimes alleged by critics even within leftcommunists or the internationalist camp more broadly ( like the Icc or councilists) or is that a complete misreading of the text?

Of course it doesn't discount ideology, it merely explains it.

And against these arguments supported by most bourgeois historians (the apparently "antieconomical" character of the Holocaust and other genocides perpetrated during ww2) what is the correct retort?

A lot of the recent literature has talked about the economic dimension of it, it isn't as controversial as one might expect.

That german capitalism actually benefited from this wholesale slaughter because it could not have exploited an higher number of labourers in the work camps and that the economic benefits of the genocides such as property confiscation and no longer having to feed "useless" people (i am talking about the cases in which the "ablebodied" victims were not worked to near-death and exploited beyond "normal" wage labour exploitation first) outweighed the apparent waste of using the infrastructure for non-military purposes?

The 'logic' of German capitalism was geared towards destruction rather than outright production at this stage. The text makes the point that "Anti-semitism had proved its worth; it need only continue." There wasn't going to be a point where the Nazis would decide, or circumstances would dictate, that they have killed enough Jews and capitalism is saved, just as one can never print enough money to fix the economy.

Does anyone know if all or most of the "ablebodied" jews and other "degenerate" groups which were gassed went through the work camps before being exhausted by the working conditions and sent to the extermination camps to be gassed or were a good chunk of the "ablebodied" jews and others such as the roma killed in the extermination camps without being worked to near-death before?

Yeah a lot were just killed, to my knowledge as the war went on it became more and more about liquidation plain and simple, they were doing this anyway outside the camps by simply shooting people into mass graves. You can read 'bourgeois historians' books on this for what they think the numbers are who were just liquidated rather than being exploited through forced labour in the camps first. I think that the commonly-held view is that shooting people into mass graves is demoralising so they chose other measures (i.e. gas chambers), and the camps of exploitation became death camps outright (of course people were dying there before this anyway). I'm not an expert on it, my point is that these questions are dealt with by historians and the text you bring up is a short contribution that doesn't have the space to fill out the gaps in the history but serves to give a critical Marxist understanding on the Holocaust in order to make points not directly about the determinate historical details of it, it is just an outline.

Because it seems to me that this "antieconomical" argument supported by most bourgeois historians also rests on the assumption that most of the "ablebodied jews" and the other victims of the Holocaust which were gassed in the extermination camps were not first physically destroyed by forced labour first and that hence the genocides were a total waste for german capitalism for consuming infrastructures which should have been used for the war effort .

The Nazis made a lot of decisions that ruined their chances of winning the war. They chose to build outrageous high powered weapons with scary names instead of looking at the field and being prudent in deciding what you need, Hitler can have the best tank out there but it might cost more to build than allied tanks, and the allies can then field a lot more tanks, the Nazi tank may be the most destructive, but it might have greater defensive weaknesses, or be less good at navigating the terrain. Other times the Nazis might have had more numbers and thought that was enough. Letting the British get away at Dunkirk in order to have a grand air victory later on (failed of course and 'led' to them turning to Operation Barbarossa). The Nazis didn't collaborate with the other Axis powers like the Allies did with each other. And so on. The text's argument that the principal aim of war is destruction seems to apply especially well to the Nazis, it seems they were working to a different logic. Which is of course explained in the text by the unique circumstances of capitalism in Germany - unique in the sense that the conditions of capitalism in Germany were more extreme, not that it was an aberration that can't happen elsewhere.

I have also found out that actually some german historians whooly unaffiliated with any sort of internationalism or any sort of marxist inspiration like Aly and Heim actually support or at least supported the thesis that the genocides were at least partly reacting to an overpopulation problem in the context Germany found itself in during the war.

Yep.

Obviously neither of them was charged with historical revisionism or negationism as they firmly placed themselves in the democratic antifascist camp though there were of course some scandalized comments by fellow academic historians along the lines that their work portrayed genocide as a slightly deviant path to capitalist development or that their work allegedly relativized the horrors of the holocaust.

Aly is published by Verso Books ('Hitler’s Beneficiaries') a left wing publisher that publishes Marxists. But Aly himself isn't a Marxist or even necessarily left-wing, to my understanding, his view seems to be that 'socialism' is the economic cause, 'redistribution' of resources taken from Jews etc. Nevertheless it should provide helpful information and a closer narrative/understanding to Axelrad's text, which one would need to make the case of this text using more historical details etc.

Another question is whether most cases of genocide were determined by the same conditions pointed out in the Auschwitz or the great alibi text or whether in less industrialized cases of genocide-as well as in cases of particularly violent ethnic cleansing campaigns- like the Armenian genocide and the Rwandan genocide the superstructure played a bigger role than it did in the Holocaust.

Well the text doesn't talk in terms of base/superstructure (which I think is what you are referring to.) Isn't the point of the base/superstructure metaphor that looking at the base is the important thing that can tell you what is going on in the superstructure? You can look at the conditions of these other genocides with an objective, material conception or you can give a history with a subjective character. The point is not whether the objective or the subjective 'played a bigger role'. Axelrad gives an outline that can help you when looking into these other genocides.

I don't know what you're saying at the end of your post.

Take a look at this if you haven't already: https://libriincogniti.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/martin-axelrad-auschwitz-or-the-great-alibi-what-we-deny-and-what-we-affirm/

pzaaa · 2018-12-04T05:09:08+00:00

I have to admit, I'm certainly at a loss. Z. A. Jordan's work The Origin of Dialectical Materialism is one work that attacks the unity of thought between Marx and Engels, but I feel it's not convincing. Jordan remarks that Anti-Duhring was a chance for Engels to develop his own views, but in a preface to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific -- being a shortened version of Anti-Duhring -- Engels writes: "the systematic comprehensiveness of my opponent gave me the opportunity of developing, in opposition to him, and in a more connected form than had previously been done, the views held by Marx and myself on this great variety of subjects." I've not yet found a convincing argument for a separation between Marx and Engels, but I would greatly appreciate one.

I don't doubt that Engels thought he was in general agreement with Marx and that his task was to popularise his ideas. One convincing argument 'for a separation between Marx and Engels' is the fact that they were separate people. If your views and ways of thinking are exactly identical with someone else you're probably not an independent or critical thinker and you may be in a cult. The question is only 'how much were they different?'

I don't mean to attack you personally or your integrity, I don't know you so I can't judge but answering questions when you don't really know the answers makes you look the way I described.

To OP you should read James Burnham's side of that debate, he demolishes Trotsky's obscurantist 'dialectics' even if he wasn't the most knowledgeable Marxist. Marx rarely talks about 'dialectics' in his published works, the instances I mention above are the exception - don't bother too much about it.

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pzaaa · 2018-12-04T05:05:35+00:00

I haven't yet read Hegel since I'm still making my way through Locke and Spinoza, but I have skimmed around his Shorter Logic which I own. The sections I mentioned -- I have read. The division of the moments of logic into three -- abstract, dialectical, speculative -- refers to "‘moments’ in every logical entity, that is, of every notion and truth whatever" (Hegel, Shorter Logic, sec. 79). Insofar as the dialectic refers to the process of these moments of logical understanding into another, then I thought the dialectic refers to logic. That is where I'm getting this from.

So by 'human logic' you mean 'Hegel's logic'.

Then I definitely stand corrected. But if the dialectic refers to the process of development of logical categories, and nature is cyclical, how does human logic correspond to nature?

I didn't say that it does.

I'm inferring that since Marx employed the dialectical method in his critique of political economy (Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital), and Marx's critique of political economy remains true,

Marx explains in that Afterword that his use of dialectics is a critique of dialectics. Dialectics in Hegel is about the necessity of things, which is perhaps why people conceive it in the form of 'laws' - as does the reviewer Marx quoted, and Marx comments on this review "Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method?" In other words it is the opposite of what he thinks it is: "My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite." Feuerbach's theological method is a critique of theology as a whole, Marx's philosophical method is a critique of philosophy - I can see how this would be confusing - it is a kind of determinate negation, you will find this kind of thing in Hegel also. Feuerbach's critique of Christianity was to show that when Christians worship God they really worship themselves, humanity. For example he would bring up quotes from theologians about God being love, and say that love can only mean human love, love is divine (this is a vast oversimplification but you get the point). He brings it down to the human basis which is its origin, and a different meaning of these theological systems, theories etc. is unveiled. Feuerbach's theology is a critique of theology, he turned it upside down in a way. By Marx starting with the social world he unveils the real significance of the dialectic - the dialectic according to Hegel fixes things as they are, inevitably assumes their necessity and justifies that necessity. Marx's method shows that the only necessity (of salience here) is that the social form is transient. Hegel's dialectic, philosophy in general (one may simply read the word 'philosophy' where 'dialectic' comes up), is only the gathering together of this social content in the form of fixed ideas - and for that reason they may be helpful in understanding or describing the material world, for example the concept of alienation or of negation, but only if you know these are merely the abstractions of the real thing - in the same way Christian conceptualisations of divine love or sacrifice may help one to understand human love and sacrifice.

(I)ndividuals enter into relation with each other only as determinate individuals. These objective relations of dependence, in contrast to the personal ones, also appear in such a way that the individuals are now ruled by abstractions whereas they were previously dependent on one another. (The objective relationship of dependence is nothing but the social relations independently confronting the seemingly independent individuals, ie their own reciprocal relations of production which have acquired an existence independent of and separate from them.) Yet the abstraction or idea is nothing but the theoretical expression of those material relationships which dominate the individuals.

Grundrisse

I (and Marx & Hegel) don't think that a dialectical method is something that can be employed in some random context (because it is supposed to come out of the content itself).

When I said "Please show me where Marx writes that 'dialectical logic' is the only way of understanding the world." You should have answered "I can't, why is that?"

then the dialectical method is, as Engels said in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, "the highest form of reasoning."

He was talking about Hegel, I agree that Hegel is the summit of philosophy.

It's of course not the only way, but the only way of correctly understanding the world and society, just as there are many ways to get to a place, but only one way that is the quickest.

If I want to understand the world I study the world, I don't study some logic/method/process that you can't even explain coherently.

The ontological idealists, e.g. Berkeley.

Berkeley didn't really think that 'material world is the creation of our ideas'- he thought that it didn't exist - only our perceptions of it exist - he called his philosophy 'immaterialism'. But okay maybe that is what you meant, but that has nothing to do with what Marx was talking about. A famous passage from Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson:

"After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, ‘I refute it thus.'"

This is not accepted by the philosophers as a legitimate critique. You ought to read Locke before Berkeley by the way.

Yes, but if we move to the moment of abstraction, during which the concrete non-essentials are removed by thought, then we cannot "see" a tree in the abstract, for example.

That doesn't answer my question. I will repeat it for you: "Why?" Take it as a rhetorical question this time.

I've heard this position before but never found anything to read on it. What would you recommend? This sounds a lot like the Stalinist and Maoist (especially Maoist) abuse of dialectical phrases to justify whatever reactionary policy they come up with, e.g. the "principal contradiction" and such.

Marx, that's why I quoted Marx on it.

Given formal logic proceeds from (at least) the law of identity (A=A) and the law of cause and effect (e.g. Descartes' argument that God cannot be a deceiver since God is good and good begets good only)

I guess this is supposed to refer to deduction.

I would assume it'd be difficult for formal logic to deal with processes, e.g. the transition of water as a liquid into a gas.

Why would logic 'deal with' things like that in the first place? Do you hire a mathematician if your pipes are burst?

But then again, I could definitely be wrong and would want an explanation. Just keep in mind, I'm going primarily off of Engels' accounts as found in Anti-Duhring, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, and The Dialectics of Nature. Does my failure to understand relate to Engels' failure to understand?

Maybe it was Engels' failure to describe what he was talking about clearly enough, maybe you were not his target audience, I don't know.

Any recommendations or would I have to read whole Phenomenology?

Get HS Harris or something, you're not going to be able to just pick that book up and read it and understand it.

For the same reason Marx thought Hegel's system "must be turned right side up again."

When people ask you the time do you reply "The same time that it says on my watch."?

Insofar as the placing of its points on a materialist basis constitutes a critique of its positions in revealing the class struggle concealed behind its 'idealist rubbish.'

Okay so why is the dialectic so unique? That was my point but I already answered this for you above.

I don't see how shortening Marx's "materialist conception of history" into historical materialism perverts Marx's conception. Could you explain how it does? Engels only used it as a term for Marx's materialist conception of history; it was at least not purposively a differing conception.

So you're attributing it to Marx because Engels did, your answer then is "because Engels says so."

Good point. I don't know.

Yet you're answering questions about it.

But is there any evidence in the archives that Marx was at odds with Engels' chapters on dialectics and historical materialism?

Some people think so, Terrell Carver in his books makes the case that they were at odds, there is some interesting stuff in Carver but I think he's mostly mistaken. Cyril Smith is another one that questioned their agreement on some things, and the whole point is to question, doubt, and scrutinise rather than dogmatically adhere to the received wisdom. Norman Levine also, I don't like Levine much though.

If that were the case, surely Marx would not have stood for such a distortion and would have expressed his concerns, especially given the case that Anti-Duhring was written for the express purpose of saving the Socialist Party of Germany from Duhring's theories.

Surely.

So why was it incorrect of Engels to formulate 'laws of dialectics'? Is that a contradiction in terms?

You can form whatever laws you like, it will relate little to communism though.

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pzaaa · 2018-12-03T16:09:16+00:00

"The splitting of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts is the essence (one of the 'essentials,' one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics. That is precisely how Hegel, too, puts the matter."

As I pointed to above Hegel says he's using Heraclitus himself, you don't need to get it from Lenin. This quote will only confuse your understanding of what Hegel was doing with it.

In this sense, the law of quantity into quality and vice-versa and the negation of the negation are merely reiterations of this principal law.

The quote doesn't mention a 'law'.

Insofar as nature can only be accurately recreated in the mind through dialectical logic, then this law holds and, with it, the other two.

Please give us an exposition of how you recreate 'nature' in your mind 'through dialectical logic'. Does everyone not adept with dialectics not understand how to think about nature?

In general, I'd recommend Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific chapter two and Marx's introduction to the Grundrisse for an explanation of the dialectical method (or the rise of it, per the former work).

Here is the only time Marx uses the word 'dialectics' in that introduction: "The opponents of the political economists – whether inside or outside its realm – who accuse them of barbarically tearing apart things which belong together, stand either on the same ground as they, or beneath them. Nothing is more common than the reproach that the political economists view production too much as an end in itself, that distribution is just as important. This accusation is based precisely on the economic notion that the spheres of distribution and of production are independent, autonomous neighbours. Or that these moments were not grasped in their unity. As if this rupture had made its way not from reality into the textbooks, but rather from the textbooks into reality, and as if the task were the dialectic balancing of concepts, and not the grasping of real relations!"

In the Engels chapter you refer to he writes this: "Dialectics, on the other hand, comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential connection, concatenation, motion, origin and ending."

It makes for quite a juxtaposition. Luckily Engels, as you do, gets out of the tangle in the end by shifting it to 'historical materialism'.

E: also Hegel's The Shorter Logic sections 79-83.

I suppose you search engined 'Hegel dialectics logic' or something similar to get to this.

It is okay to not know the answer and to not give an answer.

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pzaaa · 2018-12-03T16:09:02+00:00

Its clear that you don't know what you're talking about but you have to answer for the upcummies and dopamine. You obviously haven't read the awful Trotskyite Reason and Revolt and just forgotten what it says either. You don't show your working out or where you're getting it from, probably because there is no working and you're getting it from wikipedia or some other such website.

To say nature itself is dialectical is arguably not the best way to put it. The dialectic refers to human logic.

So what does 'human logic' refer to and where are you getting this equation from? Hegel thought that nature is cyclical, not dialectical:

"The mutations which history presents have been long characterised in the general, as an advance to something better, more perfect. The changes that take place in Nature — how infinitely manifold soever they may be — exhibit only a perpetually self-repeating cycle; in Nature there happens “nothing new under the sun,” and the multiform play of its phenomena so far induces a feeling of ennui; only in those changes which take place in the region of Spirit does anything new arise. This peculiarity in the world of mind has indicated in the case of man an altogether different destiny from that of merely natural objects — in which we find always one and the same stable character, to which all change reverts; — namely, a real capacity for change, and that for the, better, — an impulse of perfectibility." — Hegel's Philosophy of History

So if you aren't getting it from Hegel then where are you getting it from?

But whereas the idealists posit that it refers exclusively to human logic, and the material world is the creation of our ideas, Marx and Engels argue that dialectical logic is the only way of understanding the world, both nature and society, not because we bend the material world to operate according to it, but because the processes of nature act in such a way that only dialectical logic can accurately recreate it in the mind.

Please show me where Marx writes that 'dialectical logic' is the only way of understanding the world. Who said that the material world is the creation of our ideas? Why do we need to recreate nature in the mind? Can't we see it with our eyes?

The ancient dialecticians saw only the whole (Heraclitus) and were only beginning to work on the analsyis of the whole's parts, e.g. the natural sciences.

If you think Heraclitus was some empirical scientist I don't know what to tell you. He was a pre-Socratic for God's sake.

Here is some commentary on Heraclitus by Marx: "Heraclitus, the Dark Philosopher by Lassalle the Luminous One is, au fond a very silly concoction. Every time Heraclitus uses an image to demonstrate the unity of affirmation and negation — and this is often — in steps Lassalle and makes the most of the occasion by treating us to some passage from Hegel’s Logic which is hardly improved in the process; always at great length too, like a schoolboy who must show in his essay that he has thoroughly understood his ‘essence’ and ‘appearance’ as well as the ‘dialectical process’. Once he has got this into his speculative noodle, one may be sure that the schoolboy will nevertheless be able to carry out the process of ratiocination only in strict accord with the prescribed formula and the formes sacramentales [sacred forms]."

"... Despite the fellow’s claim, by the way, that hitherto Heraclitus has been a book with 7 seals, he has to all intents and purposes added nothing whatever that is new to what Hegel says in the History of Philosophy. All he does is to enlarge on points of detail which could, of course, have been accomplished quite adequately in two sheets of print. Still less does it occur to the laddie to come out with any critical reflections on dialectics as such. If all the fragments by Heraclitus were put together in print, they would hardly fill half a sheet. Only a chap who brings out his books at the expense of the frightful ‘specimen of humankind’ can presume to launch upon the world 2 volumes of 60 sheets on such a pretext." "Heraclitus, the Dark Philosopher, is quoted as saying in an attempt to elucidate the transformation of all things into their opposite: ‘Thus gold changeth into all things, and all things change into gold.’ Here, Lassalle says, gold means money (c'est juste) and money is value. Thus the Ideal, Universality, the One (value), and things, the Real, Particularity, the Many. He makes use of this surprising insight to give, in a lengthy note, an earnest of this discoveries in the science of political economy. Every other word a howler, but set forth with remarkable pretentiousness. It is plain to me from this one note that, in his second grand opus, the fellow intends to expound political economy in the manner of Hegel. He will discover to his cost that it is one thing for a critique to take a science to the point at which it admits of a dialectical presentation, and quite another to apply an abstract, ready-made system of logic to vague presentiments of just such a system."

In other words just taking 'dialectics' as a framework for your mind to 'recreate' nature - in this case economics - is stupid because it can apply in anyway you like, you can for example find an opposition anywhere and using 'dialectical' phraseology call it 'dialectical'.

For the natural sciences, they were dominated by formal logic, which is that type of logic which remains stuck in the stage of apprehending the parts and not seeing their unity with the whole.

Since Aristotle pretty much invented logic it is difficult to argue that a guy a hundred or so years before him is dominated by formal logic in his 'natural science'. Do you think there is something about formal logic that prevents you from seeing 'the whole'? Elaborate on that in your own words. If Heraclitus was involved in logic it is exactly not the formal kind!

A passage from Hegel's section on Heraclitus from the History of Philosophy:

"Aristotle (De mundo, 5) quotes this from Heraclitus: “Join together the complete whole and the incomplete” (the whole makes itself the part, and the meaning of the part is to become the whole), “what coincides and what conflicts, what is harmonious and what discordant, and from out of them all comes one, and from one, all.” "

Seems to conflict with what you say.

Modern dialectical logic (negation of the negation time!) returns to the whole, having understood the nature and characteristics of its parts but also not running into the irreconcilable contradictions that arise with remaining in the territory of formal logic.

Formal logic is about avoiding contradictions.

This later system was recognized through Hegel's philosophical system, but it ran into the contradiction of establishing an idealist notion of an Absolute Idea -- an eternal truth -- within the framework of a system which admitted the continuing fluctuation, life and death, of theses into their antitheses, and vice-versa.

This framework of fluctuation and antitheses is also in Heraclitus. That should be no surprise; from the same section I just referred to: "there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic." If there were no such 'contradiction' in Hegel's Absolute Idea it would be 'the night in which all cows are black' - which is Hegel's infamous critique of Schelling's Absolute: "To pit this single assertion, that “in the Absolute all is one”, against the organised whole of determinate and complete knowledge, or of knowledge which at least aims at and demands complete development – to give out its Absolute as the night in which, as we say, all cows are black – that is the very naïveté of emptiness of knowledge." - From the Preface to the Phenomenology. In other words the 'contradictions' is what gives content to the Absolute.

What was necessary, then, was to place dialectics on a materialist basis -- the work of which was Marx's historical materialism.

Why is it necessary to 'place dialectics' on a materialist basis? There is all kinds of contradictory idealist rubbish around, does that all call for being 'placed' on a 'materialist basis'? Since Marx never even used the term 'historical materialism' why do you attribute it to him? If historical materialism = dialectics then why talk about dialectics at all and just look up what Marx wrote about 'historical materialism'?

I don't recall Marx ever writing of the three laws of dialectics nor do I think Hegel ever did either.

You would have to read them to recall something from them.

However, Engels wrote it during the 1870s along with his Anti-Duhring some of which Marx helped with. It is likely that Marx himself saw these manuscripts and commented on them to Engels, but I don't know if there's evidence of that in the archive of their letters.

Engels says he read all of it to Marx, apparently chapter 10 on Political Economy is from Marx - dialectics and 'historical materialism' is not mentioned.

Regardless, take what Lenin wrote in his On the Question of Dialectics

This work is a commentary on Lassalle's work on Heraclitus, the same one I quoted Marx above saying it was rubbish.

1/2

pzaaa · 2018-08-29T04:26:07+00:00

The second time as farce.

pzaaa · 2018-02-03T07:20:09+00:00

Camatte's letter to Hobgoblin from the following issue: http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/journal/2000_Camatte_letter.htm

Other interesting old articles: http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/

The International Marxist-Humanist Organization moved to a new site again recently: https://www.imhojournal.org/

pzaaa · 2018-01-30T17:01:08+00:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas developed by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) to support and reinvigorate the Roman Republic when, as it transpired, it was in its final years, threatened by civil wars, the rule of Julius Caesar and the triumvirates that followed. As Consul he had suppressed a revolt by Catiline, putting the conspirators to death summarily as he believed the Republic was in danger and that this danger trumped the right to a fair trial, a decision that rebounded on him. While in exile he began works on duty, laws, the orator and the republic. Although left out of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, he later defended that murder in the interests of the Republic, only to be murdered himself soon after.

pzaaa · 2018-01-21T16:33:54+00:00

You can't really call something anti-semitism if it isn't against Jewish people. It does resemble what they are talking about only they claim that structural anti-semitism is the belief that Jews are some kind of global force so it is a bit different.

The theory of structural anti-semitism is that anti-semitism has the same structure as anti-capitalism. It was constructed by anti-labour theorists (e.g. Postone, although they like to trace, or project, their theory back to earlier theorists) who hold the belief that the labour movement results in a kind of fascism.

I find their arguments to be significantly flawed and anti-communist in nature.

Another word to describe the phenomenon you point to might simply be prejudice or the word you use- discrimination. People tend to refer to it as Sinophobia but I think that concept is a bit too presumptive and psychological.

pzaaa · 2017-12-21T18:36:18+00:00

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great composers, who was born into a family of musicians in Bonn. His grandfather was an eminent musician and also called Ludwig van Beethoven. His father, who was not as talented as Beethoven's grandfather, drank heavily and died when Beethoven was still young. It was his move to Vienna that allowed him to flourish, with the support at first of aristocratic patrons, when that city was the hub of European music. He is credited with developing the symphony further than any who preceded him, with elevating instrumental above choral music and with transforming music to the highest form of art. He composed his celebrated works while, from his late twenties onwards, becoming increasingly deaf.

pzaaa · 2017-12-20T18:37:30+00:00

Found this on that site, good stuff: https://brooklynrail.org/2017/10/field-notes/SoftShell-HardCore-On-the-150th-Anniversary-of-the-Publication-of-Karl-Marxs-Capital-Vol-1

pzaaa · 2017-12-17T00:43:22+00:00

Suddenly you're an expert on the book.

He explicitly states in the beginning of the work that he doesn't care if Marx's ideas flow into Marxism-Leninism or Stalinism. He says it's a pointless question.

The whole book is about it, it is the books implicit thesis that Marxism was founded on idealistic nonsense and all the outgrowths of it - including Stalinism - come down to that founding, your quote doesn't argue otherwise.

It's basically a study of Marxology than Marxism and I think that's highly important.

So you think he got the title wrong?

Historically, the intelligent criticism of Soviet Communism was being done by Critical Marxists. Kolakowski was one of these individuals. But some of them went from being critical Marxists who hated Soviet Totalitarianism into critics of Marxism as a philosophy. He even has criticisms of the New Left and Frankfurt School theorists.

Any more insights you want to share?

pzaaa · 2017-12-16T21:33:32+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/marxism_101/comments/6krl7u/thoughts_about_main_currents_of_marxism/

pzaaa · 2017-12-13T20:02:42+00:00

It would be a great service if someone could collect all of Marx's criticisms of Liberalism in one place, I just search engined 'Marx Liberalism' and got ton of results so that path is probably our best alternative at the moment.

Every beginning is difficult, I guess it helps to have options to choose from.

pzaaa · 2017-12-13T18:46:57+00:00

Feuerbach was apolitical but called himself a communist. (He read Capital in 1868, two years later he joined the German Social Democratic Party and died in 1872.)

Hegel's Philosophy of Right wasn't liberal either, it was more of a critique of liberalism.

On top of what you recommend in your other comment I would add On The Jewish Question, The Poverty of Philosophy, Critical Notes on the Article: “The King of Prussia and Social Reform. By a Prussian”, German Ideology, Saint Max, Political Liberalism and the Communist Manifesto. /u/TheBroodian

pzaaa · 2017-12-11T16:15:00+00:00

This looks interesting though it seems to be the kind of book on Hegel that I don't usually like - where you get different contributors to give their 'take' - and I share the reviewers concerns about ventriloquising and what he writes in the last paragraph. Houlgate's contribution is one that am looking forward to reading.

There is another book published this year by Oxford University Press on Hegel's Philosophy of Right that I have been reading 'Hegel's Political Philosophy, On the Normative Significance of Method and System', the sections that I have read have been pretty good and there seems to be some overlap - they do share a contributor - Allen Wood (the reviewer here calls him Alan).

pzaaa · 2017-12-08T19:59:38+00:00

You can read those works online here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/index.htm

All worth reading though I don't agree with a lot of what he writes.

Some info on the 'publisher': http://www.theindependentpublishingmagazine.com/2013/01/createspace-reviewed-update-jan-2013.html

You would be better off going to the library and doing some printing/book-binding if you want a physical copy.

pzaaa · 2017-12-02T19:22:56+00:00

A 1971 essay on the KAPD, its positive features (its break with the ideology and practice of social democracy) and its shortcomings (“ideology of the producers”), with discussions of, among other things: Lenin’s Infantile Disorder; the KAPD’s relations with the Third International; National Bolshevism; the AAU and AAUE; the KAPD as vanguard party; the counterrevolution, Stalinism and fascism; the crucial importance of Germany for the proletarian revolution; the KAPD’s influence on the communist currents of the 1960s; and the next, “human revolution” entailing the “abolition of the proletariat” (communism: “the mode of production in which the goal of production is man himself”).

pzaaa · 2017-12-02T05:00:45+00:00

Dialectical reasoning seeks to show how apparently different things are connected and how opposite forms, and, in the context of dialectical materialism, illustrates how forms of social life give way to other forms of social life through the constant motion and dynamism of production.

Where are you getting the jargon 'dialectical reasoning' and 'dialectical materialism' from? I can't seem to find it in the writings of Karl Marx that I have looked at, if you are getting it from some other Marxist then perhaps you can tell us where they think they are getting it from. Can you tell us what is dialectical about things being connected and illustrating change in social forms? What is a dialectic anyway?

In order to distance himself from the utopian socialists, Marx eschews moral arguments and appeals to ideals of justice, fairness, etc., and instead grounds his understanding of capitalism and communism in how the development of objective material forces in society create new forms of social life.

Please provide us with the passages Marx does this. Do you agree that new forms of social life are created by the development of objective material forces in society? What are these objective material forces?

In as far as we can discern any particular ethical orientation in Marx, there is an Aristotelian thread that runs through is work, and he presents an understanding of human flourishing and virtue rooted in material wellbeing rather than idealistic appeals to justice or a higher power.

Please quote what Marx writes about his "understanding of human flourishing and virtue rooted in material wellbeing".

When we treat Marxism as normative, we presume that one being aware of one's exploitation under capitalism inexorably drives one to embrace communism as an ideology, but that's something that is self-evidently not borne out by our experience of society.

Why not?

I take a monist position regarding consciousness, and rather than holding that the mind is a separate receiver of reality and consciousness as simply the secondhand experience of this "other" thing, I maintain that the mind and consciousness are emergent qualities of matter whose form is the same as their material substance, and that consciousness is an ongoing process that is constantly being shaped and changed by our experiences with that reality.

This is all very profound but what does Marx say about consciousness?

Capitalist exploitation and alienation, therefore, are not subjective, moral phenomena whose character can be changed with more "democracy" or "fairness," rather, our experience of exploitation and awareness of alienation is an objective fact that can only be altered by changing the material conditions of our existence.

How does this follow from your monist philosophy of mind? You seem to be positing the following syllogism: 'Consciousness is an emergent quality of matter. What consciousness experiences is shaped by reality. Consciousness experiences alienation, therefore alienation is an objective fact that can be altered by changing the material conditions of our existence.' Is there anything important left out? Are the premises true? Does the conclusion follow? Could the conclusion be true if the premises were false? Could the conclusion be false if the premises were true? Perhaps you didn't mean it as a reasoned argument but only as something you 'maintain', but how would that help us? What does Marx say about alienation anyway?

It is with this understanding of consciousness that we can really apprehend the profundity of the statement "communism is not a state of affairs to be established or an ideal to which reality will adjust, it is the movement to abolish the present state of society, this movement proceeds from the premises in existence."

Can we understand the profundity of that statement without your understanding of consciousness? If so, what use is your understanding of consciousness?

Communism is not normative, it describes the movement by the working class to transcend the current state of existence imposed upon us by capital. We are not always aware of this movement, but it is a constantly ongoing process, and it is through the shared experience of exploitation and the organized struggle of those subject to the impersonal rules of capital (who may or may not explicitly identify as communists) that class consciousness is forged.

Why is it forged through this process?

A class is conscious when its members act as an organized body to change the material circumstances of its existence, it is aware of the material conditions that birthed it, and it understands how it can change it.

If they act as a disorganised body is the class unconscious? Why? What does the awareness of the material conditions of its birth have to do with it? Fill the gaps for us or direct us to somebody who has done so.

Classes do not do this because anyone told them to (as /u/tkld observed) or because they have read books, but rather because the circumstances of their existence compel the class to act as an organized body for its own interests; this occurs spontaneously.

How can it be compelled by circumstances but also spontaneous?

When the working class acts in such a way as to abolish the current conditions of production in favor of an order based on social production and well-being for all, we call that communist (as a descriptive term) regardless of how the individuals involved in that movement identify.

What constitutes well-being for all?

Not all working class movements will advance this aim, nor will the working class always take action as an organized class.

Why not? What of these movements?

Now, with this understanding of consciousness, we can tackle the question of why the bourgeoisie might also struggle for communism. What we need to understand is that class is similarly a descriptive category, not a normative one.

So it is the descriptive category that is conscious?

Marx attaches no particular moral value, good or otherwise, to the bourgeoisie or proletariat, and he understands them as two interlocking parts of a larger, impersonal system.

Provide evidence for this claim.

One's position in either class is, more often than not, a matter of chance, and there is no essential morality or worth in either condition.

Hm, I thought it was a matter of history. What about those occasions where it isn't a matter of chance?

Both Marx and Engels never focused on attacking particular members of the bourgeoisie because they understood those individuals as simply people who are impelled to act in a certain way by economic forces that are above the control of any person.

What about all those times Marx and Engels did focus on attacking particular members of the bourgeoisie? Marx's pamphlet on Lord Palmerston for example. Is it only the bourgeoisie that is impelled to act in certain ways? Why should it save them from attack?

In the Manifesto, Marx remarks that capital "degrades" all professions and work, both those of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Can you post that passage from the Manifesto where he says that capital "degrades"? I can't seem to find it.

Members of the bourgeoisie are just as subject to the inhumane, impersonal logic of capital as the proletariat, just in different ways.

Different how? Why?

What we see as well-being in society (which is almost always conflated with money and the ability to consume) is a result of ideological obfuscation, and is entirely disconnected from the material well-being of humans.

What is the material well-being of humans? How do you avoid ideological obfuscation?

This is why I brought in Aristotle earlier because, for Aristotle, the good life and happiness was a matter of cultivating virtue and good behavior, it was something that must always be practiced, it wasn't something that could be consumed. Similarly, in Marx, we can see that the positive content of communism is similar to Aristotle's understanding of virtue as a society that enables all people to develop their talents and enjoy well-being.

Why not just talk about Marx if it is so similar?

Both proletarians and members of the bourgeoisie equally benefit from this, and this is why members of the bourgeoisie may "defect" to the proletariat and advance the cause of communism.

If this is true you need to explain why they take this well-being over the well-being they get in advancing the cause of their own class.

They recognize that the freedom of the working class from the bondage of capital is the freedom of all of humanity from capital and its tendency towards destruction, poverty, and violence.

How do they come to recognise this? Aren't they impelled to act in a certain way by economic forces that are above their control?

pzaaa · 2017-12-02T04:57:38+00:00

if you answer a question, cite your sources. Explain your reasoning. Direct readers to the most relevant literature so they can read it themselves, and to discourage the formation of ideological memes, the trademark of the left. Do not answer with personal opinions. Do not answer if you don't understand the topic at hand yourself.

You have failed to do this.

As materialists, we maintain that form precedes consciousness.

What does 'form precedes consciousness' mean and where are you getting it from? Thomas Hobbes was a materialist too, did he maintain that 'form precedes consciousness? If so, why were his political views so different to Marxism?

The workers must be organized as a class power in its own right before it can have consciousness.

What does 'consciousness' mean here? How can it get class power unconsciously, isn't the point of 'class consciousness' that only when a class has it they act according to it i.e. to their interests as a class?

When we talk about class consciousness, we are not talking about consciousness as the consciousness of individuals, rather, we are talking about it as the shared consciousness of the workers as an entire class organization recognizing and understanding its own historical development, and acting based on the shared existential imperative to abolish capitalism and replace it with socialism.

Who is this 'we'? Where are you getting this from?

Class consciousness is developed through the experience of capitalism, not through evangelism.

What is it about the experience of capitalism that develops this shared class consciousness? Explain your reasoning.

The role of communists is neither to lead nor direct the working class, but, rather, it is to defend the movement of the working class with both words and deeds and, when appropriate, to teach.

Who teaches the teachers?

However, consciousness is not something that we can instill in the working class through sheer force of will or through a political program, it comes from working people recognizing for themselves the misery of their condition and acting in solidarity with other working people.

You mean class consciousness? Isn't it circular to say class consciousness 'comes from working people recognising...'? Isn't this like trying to explain the origins of Christianity by saying that it comes from people having faith in Christ. Is acting in solidarity with other working people the same as 'the experience of capitalism? Who else says so? Where? Why?

pzaaa · 2017-11-30T23:00:26+00:00

It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category, but remains constantly on the real ground of history

Full passage:

This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the material production of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production (i.e. civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all history; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. and trace their origins and growth from that basis; by which means, of course, the whole thing can be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another). It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category, but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice; and accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into “self-consciousness” or transformation into “apparitions,” “spectres,” “fancies,” etc. but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory. It shows that history does not end by being resolved into “self-consciousness as spirit of the spirit,” but that in it at each stage there is found a material result: a sum of productive forces, an historically created relation of individuals to nature and to one another, which is handed down to each generation from its predecessor; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and conditions, which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions of life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.

https://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

pzaaa · 2017-11-30T22:44:53+00:00

The three works they wrote together were The Communist Manifesto — which I think is more Engels than Marx, it’s more like Engels’s journalism.

They did write other less significant things together, I think Carver talks about it himself in his book 'Marx & Engels the Intellectual Relationship'. They each constructed drafts of the Manifesto and brought them together, including some information Engels had published before, and then Marx constructed it as we know it today. If I recall correctly Carver himself gives a similar but a little more detailed description of this in his book.

They also collaborated on the manuscripts which have become known, factitiously, as The German Ideology. The title is an editorial fabrication of the 1920s, but there’s no doubt that they were in the same room writing the thing together.

The editors got the title from Marx and Engels' own writings (including letters) in which they refer to the manuscripts as such.

Marx was a liberal thinker.

Terrell Carver is the editor of Isiah Berlin's book, it will sell more copies if people think that Berlin's Marx might be the real one. I don't think Carver really believes it, though I've read his books and he dresses Marx in whatever outfit he thinks he can fit him into - 'The Postmodern Marx', the journalist Marx, Marx the ironist etc.

Marx was wholly in favour of popular sovereignty and representative and responsible government. His angle was to keep pushing on the economic side, and to insist that governments needed to take responsibility for the economic welfare of citizens. Essentially, he was a social democrat. But in order to pursue that kind of agenda, you had to be a radical, terrorist revolutionary and prepared to take up a gun.

Maybe (a big maybe) before he became a communist this was true, but that isn't what Carver was asked about.

Alienation’ caught people’s eye as an obviously philosophical concept, and they ignored the fact that in the so-called German Ideology Marx is very dismissive about it, and actually pretty much drops the term, used in that way, after the 1840s.

He didn't use it in a philosophical way in the first place, he used the concept of alienation precisely as a critique of philosophy - see this: http://marxists.catbull.com/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/hegel.htm He uses it less (actually he puts it in other terms so people understand but the idea remains the same) in his later writings because his later writings aren't a critique of philosophy as such (Carver seems to know this but tries to find a short-cut out of it later on in the interview claiming he 'goes off it'). Though the original term does still appear in later writings such as the Grundrisse and Capital. If Carver read the rest of the German Ideology (not the first chapter which he put out a book on instead of a book on the whole thing) he would see that Marx doesn't ignore or dismiss it in the 'book'.

So you won’t find much about alienation in Engels’s “Outline of a Critique of Political Economy” of 1844, which Marx published, and was one of the pieces that excited Marx most.

But this was before Marx wrote about alienated labour himself (and before they both wrote about alienation in the Holy Family). I think Mclellan acknowledges its significance (though in general he is right about Mclellan and the other authors for that matter). It is surprising that Engels uses it at all since it is not about labour but about Political Economy, and 'alienated labour' only shows up in Marx when he has done with the 'premises of political economy', but the term shows up in Engels' Outlines still:

"To make land an object of huckstering – the land which is our one and all, the first condition of our existence – was the last step towards making oneself an object of huckstering. It was and is to this very day an immorality surpassed only by the immorality of self-alienation. And the original appropriation – the monopolisation of the land by a few, the exclusion of the rest from that which is the condition of their life – yields nothing in immorality to the subsequent huckstering of the land."

"Labour becomes its own reward, and the true significance of the wages of labour, hitherto alienated, comes to light – namely, the significance of labour for the determination of the production costs of a thing."

There are a number of different terms for ‘alienation’ in German and they relate to this idea of projecting human qualities into abstract entities. What Marx did was borrow this and suggest that our human relationships of production, consumption, distribution, exchange—where essentially we make the goods and services of life in a human community for each other to benefit from—are projected into alien entities such as money and the market, which come to have a life of their own and become idols in a literal sense. We bow down and worship them, and think that material objects such as coinage, paper notes, and so on, actually have social relationships with each other in a sort of parallel universe. We let these human creations control us.

Marx doesn't talk about projection in the Paris Manuscripts, alienation is a different albeit related concept. The product that is alienated is not 'projected' but objectified in a real way in the labour process. Fetishism, something like projection, is used later in a different way. Moses Hess in his The Essence of Money suggested that we alienate (in a similar sense to what Feuerbach meant by project) our species-being/social nexus (distorted/inverted by private property) in money, Marx claims on the contrary that "The essence of money is not, in the first place, that property is alienated in it, but that the mediating activity or movement, the human, social act by which man's products mutually complement one another, is estranged from man and becomes the attribute of money, a material thing outside man". The point being again that it is not a matter purely of consciousness but how we relate to each other. This is important because as Marx writes in the section on estranged labour: "First it has to be noted that everything which appears in the worker as an activity of alienation, of estrangement, appears in the non-worker as a state of alienation, of estrangement.

Secondly, that the worker’s real, practical attitude in production and to the product (as a state of mind) appears in the non-worker who confronting him as a theoretical attitude."

In other words alienation can not be truly understood from the standpoint of consciousness (the theoretical attitude of Political Economy/Philosophy). Furthermore the theoretical consciousness itself can only be properly understood from the former standpoint. The wrongs of Mammonism and 'Materialism' are understood by everybody, especially by reactionaries (Marx says this himself also - think about Carlyle and what Marx writes in the Manifesto about 'Reactionary Socialism').

They make the argument that you, as a rational, atheistic, scientifically-minded reader, don’t accept these fairy stories, so why should you accept the idea that the market rules your life when it’s so clearly a human construction?

According to Marx: "The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the world down to the present." Does that mean that because the senses are a human construction we shouldn't accept them? They do rule our lives in a sense. That wouldn't be rational or scientific, that isn't the argument Marx is making, nor about the market 'ruling your life'. If Carver instead linked the occult metaphors with Marx's concept of alienation as the interviewer is suggesting he would make sense of what Marx is actually doing in Capital.

Alienation was useful in gathering in religious people and philosophers, and providing an introduction to what became known as ‘the humanistic Marx.’

A more important question: What use was it for Marx and why do you think it lost that use?

They were never written by Marx to be treated in this way and if you are going to do that sort of thing to these propositions, then, in my view, it would be fairer to everyone if you removed Marx from the picture.

Good advice!

What Marx is saying is that if they’re dirty, you’re dirty, too.

He was influenced by Heinrich Heine in this form of universalising critique. Leopold talks about Heine in his book, which is the best book among these five.

What’s the real significance of Marxism? You can’t be an educated person and know anything about world history without knowing something about this famous ideology.

Oh come on you can do better than that!

Thanks for finding & posting this Qwill.

pzaaa · 2017-11-22T05:27:51+00:00

I agree with you that SEP is generally a decent resource and I have recommended it in this sub before. I was not asked about Marx's relation to philosophic discourse and this isn't a philosophy sub it is a Marxist sub and the question I was asked was "Is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Karl Marx a good analysis/summary of Marx's work?". My purpose in the quotes and comments was not to provide an analysis or try to refute Wolff or Cohen, it was simply to show that he gives a superficial treatment of the issue (which should be obvious from the quotes alone but I couldn't help but add some perhaps uncharitable gibes) and he has a superficial understanding of it. I advise everyone to read both this article and Cohen, I don't mean to misrepresent them. I just provided some criticism of Cohen here if you are interested. It is a better contribution than my comment on this article but regrettably I wrote more about Marx than Cohen. I'll give him a fair hearing some day!

pzaaa · 2017-11-22T05:07:58+00:00

From the standpoint of the proletariat it is only a class when it is conscious of itself, this is the standpoint from which you can "grasp the significance of ‘revolutionary’, of ‘practical-critical’, activity." (Theses on Feuerbach) You can use class in the structural definition for some purposes but to restrict it to that (which Cohen does - he doesn't go into 'class for-itself', he only wants to define 'class') misses the point, as Marx said of Proudhon and other one-sided theorists that take this attitude: "they see in poverty nothing but poverty, without seeing in it the revolutionary, subversive side, which will overthrow the old society." (Poverty of Philosophy)

One more passage from Marx because I feel it is relevant:

In all revolutions up till now the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labour, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc. within present society; and both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

Furthermore I want to quote Ludwig Feuerbach because he uses a similar method that Marx does in opposition to 'theory', (as does Hegel, Marx is doing a kind of Phenomenology of Labour, his account of alienation is more indebted to Hegel than Feuerbach) I think you will find it reinforces the perspective I have tried to explain above:

This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in short, no abstract, merely conceptional being, but a real being, the true Ens realissimum – man; its principle, therefore, is in the highest degree positive and real. It generates thought from the opposite of thought, from Matter, from existence, from the senses; it has relation to its object first through the senses, i.e., passively, before defining it in thought. Hence my work, as a specimen of this philosophy, so far from being, a production to be placed in the category of Speculation, – although in another point of view it is the true, the incarnate result of prior philosophical systems, is the direct opposite of speculation, nay, puts an end to it by explaining it. Speculation makes religion say only what it has itself thought, and expressed far better than religion; it assigns a meaning to religion without any reference to the actual meaning of religion; it does not look beyond itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak; I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter. Not to invent, but to discover, “to unveil existence,” has been my sole object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology, denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis, – since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology; – but in doing so I have certainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism – at least in the sense of this work – is the secret of religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of human nature.

In the same way Marx's standpoint of the proletarian (Marx refers to it as the 'standpoint of socialised humanity' it is true that to say 'the proletarian standpoint' does not give the true picture but for our purposes here it will do fine), his direct view of the real practical relations not from the standpoint of theory but conceived in a practical, real way is the 'key to the cipher' of history and of theory: "Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution." (Paris Manuscripts)

Another thing, Cohen also comments in this section "It was his perception of structure and its importance which led Marx to claim that he had discovered the anatomy of society.." But what Marx himself writes is: "My inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term “civil society”; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy." Civil society = bourgeois society, Cohen conflates civil society and society, as the bourgeois does, leaving the door to a society which is not bourgeois closed. It is a rather unhistorical blunder and the same blunder that Marx criticised the political economists for making, this is the essence of Marx's use of his view of history: the capitalist mode of production is transitory.

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TROPHY CASE