[Xmca-l] Re: units of analysis? LSV versus ANL
Andy Blunden
ablunden@mira.net
Fri Oct 17 19:31:10 PDT 2014
Here's an excerpt from
http://www.marxists.org/archive/leontev/works/1947/historical-development-consciousness.pdf
in which social theory is taken up under the heading of the historical
development of consciousness. He could not loudly proclaim a new social
theory of course because the USSR already had a social theory, viz
"historical materialism." This is a chapter from "The Development of
Mind" which begins with amoeba and works it way up to Soviet Man.
The same process that led to separation of the producers led on the
other hand to a separation as well of the conditions themselves,
which appeared as the property of capitalists in the form of
capital. The capitalist now also personifies these conditions,
which, as far as the worker is concerned, are opposed to him, the
worker. But the capitalist’s capital also has its own existence
separate from the capitalist, which takes possession of his own
life and subordinates it to itself.
These objective conditions, engendered by the development of private
property, also determine the features of man’s consciousness in the
conditions of class society.
The traditional psychologist, of course, refuses to consider them,
seeing in them only a relation of things. He demands that psychology
should, come what may, remain within the context of the
‘psychological’, which he understands purely as subjective. He even
reduces psychological study of man’s industrial activity to
investigation of its ‘psychological components’, i.e. of those
psychic features for which engineering presents a demand. He is
unable to see that industrial activity itself is inseparable from
people’s social relations, which are engendered by it and determine
their consciousness.
But let us return to our analysis of these relations.
A consequence of the ‘alienation’ of human life that has occurred is
the emergent disparity between the objective result of man’s
activity on the one hand, and its motive on the other. In other
words, the objective content of the activity is becoming discrepant
with its subjective content, with what it is for man himself. That
also imparts special psychological features to his consciousness.
Andy
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>
> On 18 October 2014 02:56, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>> wrote:
>
> He? ANL or LSV.
> LSV states his aim to create a General Psychology in "Historical
> Crisis"
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/crisis/psycri13.htm
>
> ANL, I think the aim of a creating general theory of human
> activity was always meant to be interdisciplinary. Although for
> very good reasons it has only ever been taken up by Psychologists,
> I think it is very obviously interdisciplinary.
>
>
> Yes, ANL. Did he state an attempt to provide a social theory. Seems not?
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
>
> Andy
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>
>
> On 18 October 2014 02:20, Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>> wrote:
>
> Which only means that Vygotsky did not attempt to create a
> Social
> Theory, only a Psychology.
> But in creating a General Psychology, he left us a
> paradigm for
> the human sciences. ANL attempted to carry that through to
> create
> a Psychology which was equally a Social Theory, but in my
> view he
> was largely unsuccessful. But to have created a Psychology
> rather
> than a Theory of Everything does not make one an Idealist,
> just a
> specialist.
>
>
> Does he state this aim somewhere? That might be interesting
> to look at.
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
>
>
>
>
> Andy
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
>
>
> On 18 October 2014 01:48, Andy Blunden
> <ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>
>
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net
> <mailto:ablunden@mira.net>>>> wrote:
>
> No, LSV is quite right, Huw. You and I can go
> through the same
> sequence of events, but if, for example, the
> events really get
> under your skin, and perhaps due to past
> experiences, or
> to some
> sensitivity or another, it really shakes you up
> and causes
> you to
> dwell on the experience, work over it and reflect
> on it,
> then most
> likely you will make a personal development. If
> perhaps on
> other
> hand, maybe because of some prejudice I had, the same
> experience
> just went like water off a duck's back for me and
> I didn't
> care
> tuppence about the experience and just simply
> turned to next
> business, then I will not make a development.
>
>
> But does ANL refute this? He is simply asserting that
> experience is derivative to activity, not that meaningful
> things don't follow from experience.
> It is *only* the "subjective" side of
> experience and the
> *reflection* of "objective" relations/events that
> forms
> personal
> development. Only. And that is LSV's point.
>
>
> And it is ANL's point that these experiences arise in
> activity. Note that LSV doesn't provide a medium for
> their
> formation, he simply refers to them as forms.
>
> And can I just echo Martin and David's observation
> that
> consciousness before language was well-known and
> foundational to
> Vygotsky, and consequently consciousness other than
> language. And
> Julian and Mike's observation that "the ideal" lies
> ultimately in
> social practices, the doing-side of which give
> content and
> meaning
> to speech which speech would lack outside its
> being part
> of those
> activities. Vygotsky knew this, and this was why he
> introduced a
> range artifacts derived from the wider culture, as
> mediating
> elements, into social interaction.
>
> So ANL is going along with the still widely held
> prejudice
> that
> Vygotsky was *just* all about language. Not true.
>
>
> I would read these in terms of the opening paragraph
> ("propositions that have been connected to a unified
> system,
> but are far from equivalent") and then there is the
> politics
> of survival.
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
> Andy
>
> https://www.academia.edu/7511935/The_Problem_of_the_Environment._A_Defence_of_Vygotsky
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *Andy Blunden*
> http://home.pacific.net.au/~andy/
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
> <http://home.pacific.net.au/%7Eandy/>
>
>
> Huw Lloyd wrote:
>
> ....
>
> Hence ANL is right to impute (metaphysical)
> idealistic
> tendencies to this
> paper of LSV's. Because to base the
> development on
> subjective
> emotional
> experience is idealistic. ANL, conversely,
> refers to the
> relativity of
> experience upon activity. It does not help
> that LSV
> refers to
> his norms as
> ideals and that all of the examples he
> provides are
> about speech
> communication. It is ripe for
> misinterpretation as an
> idealistic paper.
>
> Best,
> Huw
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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