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Dialectic in Marx -1- r .2.'tt & DIALECTIC IN MARX by Ian Edgell Hunt, Bachelor of Arts with Honours (sydney university) This thesis is submitted to the Deparffnent of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide, December 1989, for the Degree of Doctor of philgsophy This thesis was written under the supervision of Professor Graham Nerlich, Department of Philosophy, University of Adelaide i t.. (l.. 1i ,, ,\,. ,\ i i .'l,' 111- SYNOPSIS This thesis is a study in the interpretation of Marx's Dialectic. Its aim is to show that Marx has a model of the structure of what might be termed 'organic systems' which is employed to explain constancy and change in social structures, This model constitutes Marx's 'dialectic'. I propose to show that failure to understand this model has led many critics of Marx's theory of society into a fundamental misunderstanding of Marx's theory of historical materialism, his theory of capitalism and his theory of social revolution. Once this misunderstanding is exposed, it becomes clear that a central theme of the philo- sophical critique of Man<ism has no substance. Many of the objections to Marxism, such as those recently rehearsed in Jon Elster's book, Making Sense of Marx, are shown to be baseless. The importance of this project is that it shows that a viable Marxist research program remains once simplistic interpretations are cleared away. In the first chapter of the thesis, I discuss the question of whether Marx's dialectic involves the claim that there are confradictions in reality in some sense or other. I argue that this question is relatively unimportant in Marx's philosophy. What is important to Marx is the causal postulate that there are systems constituted as 'identities of opposites, which have a tendency to become other than what they are as a result of conflicts inherent in their nature. In the second chapter, I show that Hegel and Marx have different conceptions of an identity of opposites, with Hegel's conception shaped by his 'speculative' standpoint, and Marx's shaped by his materialism. I show that Marx sees the elements of organic systems as opposites, united not by an Hegelian teleology which they serve to realize, but by each being a systematic presupposition and result of other, opposite, elements. In the third chapter, I compare and contrast Marx's model of an unity of opposites with those of Kant and Hegel. The last three chapters use this model to clarify and develop Marx's theory of historical materialism, his theory of capitalism and his theory of revolution. -lv- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments I received from George Couvalis, Wayne Cristaudo, Karel Curran, Helen MacDonald, Brian Medlin, Graham priest and Gary Thompson. I would especially like to thank my supervisor, Graham Nerlich, who commented insightfully on the whole text, and helped me tighten and clarify my ideas. Finally, this thesis is dedicated to my wife, susan Maywald, who was my companion while I wrote it, and who cheerfully and compassionately negotiated a lesser involvement on my pat wittr household and children while the pressures of writing were greatest. 1 CHAPTER ONE DIALECTIC IN MARX: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Marx's sketch of Historical Materialism rests on two key distinctions. One is the distinction between productive forces and social relations of production; and the other is the distinction between the economic basis of society and its legal and political superstructure. When we consider his more developed theory of the capitalist mode of production we then have two more important distinctions: between the circulation and production of commodities, and between commodity-prices and values. Marx's intimations of a theory of revolution introduce a further distinction between conscious class-struggle and its objective material conditions.l It is not too difficult to spell out in a provisional way what some of these distinctions amount to. Taking the productive forces/relations of production distinction first, the following can be gleaned from Marx's text. The productive forces are the various factors, elements, or 'conceptually specific components' of the production process in a society, 'considered 1 This is intended to be representative ¡ather than exhaustive. The first two distinctions come from Marx's sketch of historical materialism, see K. Marx, "Preface to A Cont¡ibution to the Critique of Political Economy", Marx and Engels, Selected Works, vol 1, (Moscow: Progress Publishers).The third belongs to Marx's theory of capitalism, see K. Marx, Capital, vol 1, ch.3, trans. Ben Fowkes (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 19?6), and the last to his theory of revolution, see for example, his "Theses on Feuerbach,IIÍ" , Selected Worlcs, vol I 2 from its real side' as a process in which useful things are created by labourers using instruments on raw materials.2 The productive forces include labour-power, skills, tools and machines, product-components and resour""r,3 tuk"n as elements of the relationship between producer and product. The social relations of production are the factors of the production process which determine the aim of production, or the interests served by it. They involve the 'social position of the agents of production in relation to each other'.4 Th"y are the relations through which control over production is exercised so that it serves its social pu{pose, and they thus constitute the specific social character, or social form, of the production process. Social relations of production include 'property relations' and their attributes, such as the managerial authority of a capitalist.s A rejection of this distinction has been a central strand in the philosophical critique of Marx's theory. First, some critics have claimed that the distinction cannot be made 'clearly'. Taking the productive forces to be anything which contributes to production in any way, Acton suggests that social relations of production must be included among the productive forces, and so cannot be said to be determined by them.6 Second, critics have argued it is incoherent to suppose that productive forces and social 2 K. Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p.981, andselecteclWorks, vol 1, p.503, p.518. 3 Marx, Capitat, vol. 1, pp. 980-981. 4 Marx, Capital, vol. 1., p. 1065, and Selected Works, vol 1, p. 503, p. 519. 5 Mar^, Capital, vol. l, pp. 450-451. 6 g.g. Acton, The ltlusion of the Epoch, (London: Cohen & West, 1955), p. 167. 3 relations of production could be causally related in the way Marx claims. Plamenatz asks how the social relations of production can 'correspond' to the forces of production, and also be said to 'fetter' them.7 Further, the social relations of production surely have promoted the development of the productive forces, an example discussed by Marx being the transition from manufacture to mechanised production under capitalism.S It ulro seems impossible to determine the productivity of tools, resources or people independ- ently of the social form of production.The very same machine will be more or less productive depending on whether it is used in capitalist production, or in petty commodity production. A worker may be motivated to work harder as part of a factory team, than as an independent peasant.9 Given that the social relations of production thus determine the specific character and development of the productive forces, how can the productive forces then be said to determine the social relations of production? Taking now the distinction between social relations of production, that is, the economic basis of society,lO and the legal and political supersfucture, parallel criticisms have been made of it. Marx's intentions are not so clear in this case. However, given that the social relations of production are relations through which control over production is exercised so that it serves its social pu{pose, the superstructure, as its 'expression', is plausibly the 7 J. Plamenatz, German Marxism and Russian Communism, (London: Longmans, 1954),p.29, 8 Marx, Capital, vol. 1, part iv, and appendix, pp. 1034-1036. 9 SeeCapital, vol 1, pp.44l-7, and see also the related points made by H. Braverman in Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degraclation of Work in the Twentieth Century, chs 7-9, and W. Suchting, "'Productive forces' and 'Relations of production' in Marx", Analyse & Krilik, 4, 1982, p. L68 1o Marx,'Preface', p. 503. 4 structure of rights and constraints which coercively sustain and regulate the system of property in society, whether by legal, political, or other means, such as moral custom. Once again,critics have attacked the clarity of this distinction. Plamenatz, for example, at one stage could not imagine what social relations of production might be. Subsequently, having accepted the possibility that the social relations of production might include 'property relations' and their attributes, Plamenatz argued that they could not be specified independently of 'rights' of one kind or another. If a capitalist exercises control over the use of means of production, this is at least partly because others 'respect' that control, or 'We regard the capitalist as being 'entitled' in some sense to it.ll thus cannot specify the base and superstructure independently of each other. This in turn has provided the ground for denying that base and superstructure are causally related as Marx supposes they are. For example, Plamenatz claims that, since the econ- omic basis of society cannot be conceived independently of the legal and political super- structure, it cannot 'determine' the superstructure. And, if we do we allow that some distinction may be drawn between base and superstructure, the superstructure must exert an enormous influence over the base, since it sustains and regulates the base.12 From 11.See German Marxism...,pp.2l-7, p.34, and then J.
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