The exchange between mike, Jay, and Nate connects in my mind with the
earlier thread about history/text. It is a complex whole of a discussion
and thus challenges ones powers of dialectic imagination just to find a
place to comment well, that is taking up the whole and not just appending
disarticulated (inarticulate?) comments. Let me give it my best shot before
having to leave my home base again later this morning.
I was separated from the discussion on "history/text" at the point that
Martin Owen had just made the following comment:
"The role of "accident" I feel is greatly exaggerated, but Trotsky needed
the "accidental" early demise of Lenin to formulate explanation and yet
remain true to the spirit of dialectical materialism."
This appeal to accident spurred me to re-read the chapter of Lukacs
ontology dedicated to Marx in which he discusses the marxist concept of
history (historicity) in detail and points out the centrality of "accident".
It comes as something of a surprise to me that Jay Lemke's comments on the
issue of horizontal development parallel in certain broad strokes Lukacs
elucidation of the marxist concept as Lukacs developed it in the mentioned
text. In the first place, Jay's description of development as:
"First, once a new synthesis is achieved, all the components are
transformed (relationally, and so in how they can mean and how we use them)
and so while performance can degrade, you can never go back again to the
status ante quo. Second, you can't take shortcuts. In order to get to later
dynamical regimes of the system, you must first pass through various
intermediate ones."
To obtain a concept of history one needs to add (which Jay may or may not
want to do) the idea that historicity itself is the expansion of social
relations where previously natural ones -- ie, relations that do not involve
a representation of the goal, causal not teleological relations -- had
dominated. This is another way of pointing to the increase of division of
labor, of communication, in the organization of social relations. I find
this to be an eminently satisfying definition since it, in general, accounts
for what historians do tend to write about when they move past the
ideographic. It is important to emphasize that there is no moral valuation
in this notion of development anymore than there is a moral valuation in any
description of ecological succession (eg, the transition from coniferous to
deciduous forests; grasslands to woodlands, etc.).
There are two related topics: the role of accident and the broader one of
horizontal v vertical development. With respect to the latter, and the
correlated problem of "unequal development", Lukacs discusses the notion of
"classicism" which in turn is related to the impossibility of obtaining
laboratory conditions when conducting social-historical investigations.
Thus when one discusses a given system, the kind of system that would
characterize one level from which "you can never get back to the status ante
quo", one can only point to the cases in which those systems arose in their
purest form, in which other relations were miminal. Lukacs gives as an
example the Athenian state (the purest example of the ancient state). The
classic form is clearly not (as Jay again points out) the form to which all
developmental paths will tend, it is simply the one in which the
characteristic relations of that form/stage/level are most clearly visible
and predominant. Accident and unequal development are necessary. In fact
Lukacs states:
" . . . the infinity and heterogenity of the objectively operative factors
and the majore conequences of this situation, i.e., that scientific laws can
only fulfill themselves in the real world as tendencies, and necesitties
only in the tangle of opposing forces, only in a mediation that takes place
by way of endless accidents. (BUT) This structure of social being in no way
means that is is unknowable, or even that the possibility of knowing it is
reduced." (103)
Marx himself dealt with the issue of horizontal development when he
considered what happens when one group conquered another:
"In all cases of conquest three things are possible. The conquering people
sujugates the conquered under its own mode of production (e.g., the English
in Ireland in this century and partly in India; or it leaves the old mode
intact and contets itslef with tribute (e.g., the Turks and Romans); or a
reciprocal interaction takjes place whereby something new, a synthesis
arises (the Germanic conquests in part). In all cases, the mode of
production, whether that of the conquering people, that of the conquered or
taht emerging from the fusion of both, is decisive for the distribution that
results." (1973:97).
One way to approach this, is to consider which elements cross the systems
and their relationship to the internal contradictions. Usually one system
is clearly dominant but this not necessarily the case. In any event, given
that the dynamic movement of any system is determined by its internal
contradictions, we can evaluate the role and function that the shared
element (horizontal link) comes to play in relation to those contradictions.
In some cases the new element may accentuate the internal contradictions, in
other cases it might be totally neutral to those internal contradictions.
In the former, we may see a transformation and synthesis, in the latter no
change at all.
Here the bridge between accident (historically accidental events) and
necessary development might be traced out.
Paul H. Dillon
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