Re: two dialectics from the abstract to the concrete

Phil Graham (pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au)
Thu, 04 Feb 1999 21:33:10 +1100

The first of these got truncated for some reason. I'll try again ...=20

At 23:55 03-02-99 -0500, Jay wrote:
>It was nice to read Marx own words on these themes ... I had the distinct
>sense, as I think I have had before reading him, that there are actually
>TWO distinct dialectics between the abstract and the concrete.

That's my impression also. I have a paper currently under review which
posits a 'double dialectic of reciprocal causality' in human social
systems. Such a view requires us, especially in the so-called information
economy, to see the relationship between dynamic social, material, and
technological environments in which is embedded the socio-cognitive
metabolism of individuals, institutions, societies - and their
_relationships_ with the processual dynamics of social and material
evolution. Structures necessarily emerge from these reciprocally determined
relationships (both material and abstract structures). Each structure that
emerges reciprocally specifies the environment in which instantiations of
the next may take place. The environment and the individual also
reciprocally specify diachronically separated instantiations for each
other. =20

=20

'The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively
active in a definite way enter into =85 definite social and political
relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out
empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection
of the social and political structure with production [includes mental and
physical production - all processes that constitute society]. The social
structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of
definite individuals =85

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first
directly interwoven with the material activity and the material
intercourses of men [sic], the language of real life =85 The same applies to
mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality,
religion, metaphysics etc. of a people. Men [sic] are the producers of
their conceptions, ideas, etc. =85 Consciousness can never be anything else
than conscious existence, and the existence of men [sic] is their actual
life-process. If in all ideology men [sic] and their circumstances appear
upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much
from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the
retina does from their physical life-process' (Marx, 1846/1972).

Interestingly, Marx argues that the antagonistic relations of the
capitalism form of society spring from the =91latent slavery in the family=
=92
in which =91wife and children are the slaves of the husband=92 (1846/1972, p=
.
123). The diachronic unfolding of this logic entails increasing material
and mental divisions of labour that eventually fragment into infinite class
(ie categorically subjective according to self-descriptions produced in a
given context) interests.

Autopoiesis plays a part in my theorising here. I characterise societies as
living, self-producing, evolutionary, and adaptive (id)entities constituted
of individual identites:=20

The second tier of the double dialectic is =91a dialectics of knowledge=92
which =91establishes a world of cognitive significance for this identity.
Knowledge emerges from the perspective provided by this identity=92 and
refers to somatically generated meanings engendered by the relationship
between a system its environment (Varela, 1992, p. 14). This somatic
significance stands in dialectic opposition to the coupling between the
system and its environment, the necessary and permanent embeddedness and
dependency of the system on its environment, =91since only through such
coupling can its world be brought forth=92 (p. 14) Such coupling includes
=91socio-linguistic exchanges for our subjective selves=92 (p. 14). The key
point here is that a living system produces=20

'its own domain of problems and actions to be "solved"; this cognitive
domain does not exist "out there" in an environment that acts as a landing
pad for an organism that somehow drops or is parachuted into the world.
Instead, living beings and their worlds of meaning stand in relation to
each other through mutual specification or co-determination. Thus what we
describe as significant environmental regularities are not external
features that have been internalised =85 Environmental regularities are the
result of a conjoint history, a congruence which unfolds from a long
history of co-determination' (p. 14,).=20

Is this what you mean, Jay?

Phil

Phil Graham
pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html