Re: Re(2): A sign forms a structural centre which determines the whole

From: Andy Blunden (andy@mira.net)
Date: Sat Jan 13 2001 - 19:14:45 PST


"I think that this cultural historical circumscription of Hegel is too
limited. An analogy: the development of transoceanic, worldwide travel
were historical conditions for the discarding of the ptolemaic, the
adoption of the copernican cosmological system. But the object of the
understanding is not reducible to the conditions that predisposed its
development. Similarly, one could say that the emergence of value as the
determinant of the economic system predisposed Hegel's elucidation of the
dialectic but the latter is not reducible to the former."
-----
Sure Paul, and like Philip, I strive for generalisation but I'm always
stepping on the thin ice of reductionism. But ... "Let us provisionally say
just this much in advance: Hegel’s standpoint is that of modern political
economy. He grasps labour as the essence of man." [Marx:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844-epm/alt/hegel.htm#44H8]

"Value" is definitively in the domain of social construct, it represents
the adoption of specific social relations and ethical precepts. While there
is an important sense in which the arrangement of bodies in the solar
system is a social construct, there is a strong sense in which this is
given by nature, and "revealed" by human practices which have become
sufficiently broad that people are contrained to encompass the sphereical
shape of the Earth. It is interesting to read Adam Smith's "Principles of
Moral Philosophy" which he wrote _before_ "Wealth of Nations", and see how
the concept of value is emerging out of an exclusively ethical conception.

So the Ptolemaic system is certainly not _reducible_ to global travel;
global travel is a development of social practice which excluded certain
"magical" conceptions. Falling off the edge of the flat earth was a
practice which proved to be impossible.

_____________________________________________________
"Value mediates the social division of labor. One could say that the
global division of labor is the highest order activity system. One that
subsumes all the others. Money is the artefact that enables this but it
also does something else: it represents a "store of value". As such it is
based on the historical cultural form: private property. From this
perspective, one can rephrase your question: can the exchange functions of
money exist independently of the store of value functions?"
-----

Well, I firmly believe that the answer to *this* question is "No", unless
there is a global catastrphe which throws us backwards. Just as surely once
objective enquiry is alloweed, knowledge is accumulated, once a medium of
exchange is allowed, value will be accumulated. That's my view.

_____________________________________________________
"Here we arrive at questions concerning the function of private property
and the issue of economic scarcity and necessity are certainly among the
elements that determine this function. So we arrive at a second question:
can we overcome economic scarcity and necessity on a global scale and thus
eliminate at least one of the bases that leads to the need for storing
value in a form that is appropriable by the individual independently of the
social relations, the division of labor that produced that value."
-----

To a significant extent economic scarcity is a social construct, and this
cannot be seen as a "base". The exchange market _generates_ scaracity.
{Hegel's Philosophy of Right is interesting on this:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prcivils.htm#PR244
& 198]

Andy
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| - Andy Blunden - Home Page - http://home.mira.net/~andy/index.htm - |
| "It has been said that the very essence of civilisation consists of |
| purposely building monuments so as not to forget". L S Vygotsky 1930 |
~ Spirit, Money & Modernity, Melbourne Uni Summer School 23/24 Feb '01 ~
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