6 sept 2000
from peter jones
nate wrote:
I mean what if Marx stopped at demonstrating the ideal quality of money or
labor - just showed its historical trancendental quality. I don't read him
as accepting the determinates of history, but the opposite opening up the
collective possibility of changing it. It seems to me right to point toward
the ideal qualities of things in the lines of Marx but in the end we have to
get rid of money, right?
Nate
im sure this is absolutely right, and a weakness in my own discussion certainly
that this point is not mentioned (i'm sure andy will have something to say
about it and it is very nicely discussed in cyril smith's work on marx which is
linked to andy's website). money is a form of value,and value is a historically
specific (and transient) form and relation of production. indeed it is the
expression of a historically specific process of alienation, ie the process by
which human bodily and mental capacities take on forms unrececognizable to the
people whose capacities they are. Not only that, but these capacities having
taken the form of things, tangible and ownable rule over their creators. it
is vital that we should not in general confuse the historically and socially
specific forms of the alienated process of life activity with the humanly
necessary, inevitable, law governed logic of the process of human
development. More specifically, we should not confuse the historically limited,
impoverished, crippled logic of human productive activity as it appears in the
valorization process (with its attendant spiritual activities) with the
general features or potential of human productive activity. Similarly, we
should not confuse the forms and efficacies of discursive or symbolic power
with the general, essential or inevitable power of language, discourse,
communication, thinking etc. in my own work i know i have often been guilty of
such confusion or at least of not trying to sort out the confusion. in
reference to ilyenkov's work, i think it would only be fair to say that
ilyenkov is not presenting the ('alienated' and alienating) logic of evolution
of the value form per se as a picture of the eternal necessity of the dominance
of value (in some form) as subject over humanity (as object). his argument, i
think, is that marx's treatment shows how ideal forms emerge within activity,
that they take their existence and power from that system of activity within
which they are rooted and are 'necessary' only so long as that system of
activity exists within they have that function. as long as you have production
in which 'value' is the subject, then you will have mediation by ideal 'forms
of value' including money etc. in other words, we should be very careful (more
careful than i usually am for sure) in extrapolating ilyenkov's 'typical case'
to other phenomena. but i think ilyenkov's discussion also shows us something
else, which i take to be the essential thrust of his contribution: the role of
the ideal (of the 'ideal') in the transcending of the historically specific and
constraining forms in which we act (see quotation in previous message). a bit
garbled, sorry.
all best wishes
P
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