Perhaps ...
The manuscript from which you quote was originally an introduction to " a
contribution to the critique of political economy" but was not included. It
was published as a separate article in 1903 in Germany before being
published as part of the Grundrisse later. I don't know if it would have
taken 30 yrs to get to Russia.
Also, similar discussions appear in
Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts
Third Manuscript PRIVATE PROPERTY AND LABOR
'Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you
arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question does not arise
from a standpoint to which I cannot reply because it is a perverse one. Ask
yourself whether that progression exists as such for rational thought. If
you ask about the creation of nature and of man, then you are abstracting
from nature and from man. You assume them as non-existent and want me to
prove to you that they exist. My answer is: Give up your abstraction and
you will then give up your question. But if you want to hold on to your
abstraction, then do so consistently, and if you assume the non-existence
of man and nature, then assume also your own non- existence, for you are
also nature and man. Do not think and do not ask me questions, for as soon
as you think and ask questions, your abstraction from the existence of
nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egoist that you assume
everything as non-existence and still want to exist yourself?'
Contributions to a critique etc
Hegel accordingly conceived the illusory idea that the real world is the
result of thinking, which causes its own synthesis, its own deepening, and
its own movement; whereas the method of advancing from the abstract to the
concrete is simply the way in which thinking assimilates the concrete and
reproduces it as a concrete mental category. This is, however, by no means
the process of evolution of the concrete world itself. (etc)
And
Poverty of Philosophy
Is it surprising that everything, in the final abstraction -- for we
have here an abstraction, and not an analysis -- presents itself as a
logical category? Is it surprising that, if you let drop little by
little all that constitutes the individuality of a house, leaving out
first of all the materials of which it is composed, then the form that
distinguishes it, you end up with nothing but a body; that, if you leave
out of account the limits of this body; you soon have nothing but a
space -- that if, finally, you leave out of the account the dimensions
of this space, there is absolutely nothing left but pure quantity, the
logical category? If we abstract thus from every subject all the
alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in
saying that in the final abstraction, the only substance left is the
logical category. Thus the metaphysicians who, in making these
abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they
detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the
nearer to the point of penetrating to their core -- these metaphysicians
in turn are right in saying that things here below are embroideries of
which the logical categories constitute the canvas. This is what
distinguishes the philosopher from the Christian. The Christian, in
spite of logic, has only one incarnation of the _Logos_; the philosopher
has never finished with incarnations. If all that exists, all that
lives on land, and under water, can be reduced by abstraction to a
logical category -- if the whole real world can be drowned thus in a
world of abstractions, in the world of logical categories -- who need be
astonished at it?
All that exists, all that lives on land and under water, exists and
lives only by some kind of movement. Thus, the movement of history
produces social relations; industrial movement gives us industrial
products, etc.
Just as by dint of abstraction we have transformed everything into a
logical category, so one has only to make an abstraction of every
characteristic distinctive of different movements to attain movement in
its abstract condition -- purely formal movement, the purely logical
formula of movement. If one finds in logical categories the substance
of all tings, one imagines one has found in the logical formula of
movement the _absolute method_, which not only explains all things, but
also implies the movement of things.
It is of this absolute method that Hegel speaks in these terms:
"Method is the absolute, unique, supreme, infinite force,
which no object can resist; it is the tendency of reason to
find itself again, to recognize itself in every object."
-----------------------
Phil
Phil Graham
pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html