Paul,
Well, for me, it all started with that 3-hour car journey with Peter Jones
c. 1985 when Peter explained to me how thinking is the outcome of the
internalising of our social activity: ego-centric speech, instrumental
vocalisation, reading aloud, inner speech, concepts, ... and so on.
and then add to that Ilyenkov's proposition that Hegel's Logic can be
justified as logic if one *extends the domain* of logic from verbal
propositions to "objective thought-forms", or cultural productions, ...
and then add the revelation, when I read Lukacs and Marcuse on the "young
hegel" and then read "Philosophy of Right", that Hegel was writing about
political economy and the state *before* he wrote logic, and there is a
basis for believing that his publication of the Logic was a kind of "proof"
of what was rational in society, ... (wouldn't any one of us argue that our
particular idea about how society _should_ run is more "rational"? ... he
was the pioneer of "consensus decition-making and all that group-dynamics
stuff that came out of the US in the 1930s/40s/50s/60s and into the Peace
Movement and Women's Movement, etc.)
OK,
so I started reading Hegel by following Lenin, as a "theory of cognition",
but I found this only goes so far, and I can't really stomach this "grand
theory of scientific thinking" which the Soviets have, and I think people
like Tony Smith go along with it too, ... I think someone like Feyerabend,
who is opposed to all "methodology" has a point, ...
Now, so what's going on with _Capital_? Is it that Marx has picked up from
Hegel this great "Dialectical method" which can be applied to solving all
sorts of problems? I don't think so.
So, your observation ...
"value=essence, use-value=being, notion=capital"
I think your equation is a fair approximation actually. I don't think
you've got it wrong. (But of course, the concepts are different, not =).
So, so far as I can see, we are involved in social activity, and we
internalise that social activity, and reproduce it in a specifically human
way inside our bodies, and that talking to ourselves and so on is a kind of
hypothetical social practice, which may be externalised again whenever we
actually do anything, and it is that external activity which provides the
basis for "philosophers" and "economists" to have something to talk about.
And of course, out relationship with nature is mediated through that
activity, so that is the way in which we get to know about nature, too.
Now, it seems to me that Hegel has abstracted from that activity to make a
"logic", and because our thinking is a kind of "internalisation" of that
external activity, he can elaborate his logic by making a logical critique
of the various forms of thinking corrersponding to different forms of
cultural activity.
But also, there is an objective (i.e. outside the head) abstraction taking
place as well, and that is the value relation. Value is not equal to
essence (knowledge); each has its material basis (like 'word' and
'meaning'). As the value relation has come to penetrate and saturate social
relations and dominate all _other_ relations, then the two come together.
(In OZ, we call it "economic rationalism")
So, from the standpoint of political economy, your equation is a valid one.
Hegel in his Logic and Marx in his Capital, are both describing
abstractions from social activity, "alienated social practice", ideals, -
one internal, the other external. So it makes sense that Hegel did provide
the basis for writing capital; it just had to be found out there in the
world where it bgean, not in the head (where we come to _know_ it).
It *is* important though, to not just make a kind of "metaphor", but to
keep in mind the material basis for the homology between Capital and The
Logic, because the word Logic implies "necessity", and while the relations
of capital manifest themselves to us as necessity, in fact they are not,
they can be dispensed with.
the internal-external relation there is vital then.
Andy
At 17:36 21/06/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>Andy,
>
>Perhaps you can follow up on the tantalizing comment that Vygotsky provided
>the key to your understanding of the categories of Hegel's logic.
>
>It's really quite intriguing since there is an implicit relationship between
>"alienation" (Entrfremdung primarily and to a lesser degree Entausserung)
>and the Vygotskian notion of internalization and I'm wondering if that had
>any part in your insight. The difference between the description of
>alienation in the Phenomenology of Spirit and it's somewhat transformed role
>in the Logic seems to me to be a major hurdle to overcome. In any event, I
>find that it's somewhat easy to read the Logic materialistically if the
>categories of capital are substituted; e.g., value=essence, use-value=being,
>notion=capital, or do I have that wrong? I wonder how a similar reading
>from the Vygtoskian perpsective would go.
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>
>
>
>
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