Re: [xmca] motive/project

Paul, you have made a number of powerful points and rather
than trying to answer everything, I think it may be best if
I focus on how I read Marx as having arrived at "Capital."

Interestingly, in "Comments on James Mill," written in 1844

http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1844/james-mill/index.htm

even before the famous Ec & Phil Manuscripts, Marx makes a
sweeping criticism of bourgeois society based on the
commodity relation. I suspect he came to see his own
thinking here as moralistic. I don't know, but certainly he
went on a long journey from c. 1849, before arriving at a
point, in 1859, where "the chapter on Capital" (and
ultimately the whole book) began with the commodity,
including earlier drafts which began with "Production" and
so on.

A "commodity" is not a thing. I think Marx makes that clear:
it is a relation between people - and not between products -
which takes on the appearance of being a thing or a relation
bwteen things. So I would insist that Marx begins Capital
with a dyadic relation between subjects. (Of course it is a
highly mediated relation between people. Its meaning can be
analytically demonstrated only by means of devices isolate
this "cell" from the myriad of relations around it. That is
after all the whole point.) But the point is that however
mediated and complicated exchange of commodities has become
by 1859, including money!! exchange of commodities is a
simple and observable (phenomenal, empirical) interaction
between real people, not a "force" or "principle" or "law"
or "value" or "variable."

"Subject" here means subject in the sense which includes
social subjects (such as companies) as well as individuals,
and subjects in the Hegelian sense. The question of exactly
what relates with what with the commodity relation is never
fully dealt with by Marx. In most examples, it seems to be
an individual (a baker or a tailor, or a worker) but clearly
this is a literary device, and I don't really think Marx
needs to go beyond this. But even in 1844, Marx seems clear
that "commodity" is a relation between people (individuals,
groups or subjects) and not a class of things or relations
between things. Marx did not share in the commodity
fetishism he described.

I think we both agree that Marx had to make a long journey,
working his way through the literature of political economy,
and all the concepts used to describe economic activity, to
arrive at the conviction that he should start off from the
commodity relation to "reconstruct" political economy. Is
that right? Do you agree? So once having put down the
foundation stone (the commodity relation) one concept after
another flows. The concepts which then proceed to fill the
pages of "Capital" are obviously not dyadic relations
between individuals. It is all about finding the starting point.

The relation between an employer and (potential) employee is
obviously not just a relation between two individals; the
relation "pre-supposes" the dispossession of the workers,
concentration of wealth, a certain producivity of labour,
circulation of capital, etc.. But my contention is that Marx
analytically began (his analysis) from the relation between
two equal subjects engaged in exchange of labour in order to
erect the theoretical apparatus to understand the whole
business.

If I propose "project collaboration" as the secret of modern
social life, there has been a long journey to arrive at this
new starting point.

In his pre-1859 writings Marx did not have a "unit of
analysis," i.e., a concept of the field of phenomena he
wanted to understand and transform. He was searching. It
took a couple of years after 1841 for him to realise that
key lay in political economy, not literature or law or
philosophy. It is only with his work that you refer to, on
"The Method of Political Economy" (written c. August 1857)
that I think we see him approaching this "unit" - he even
discusses how Hegel took "right" as his starting point for
"Objective Spirit." It was in January 1859 when he becomes
convinced that the "chapter on Capital must begin from the
commodity."

http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1859/letters/59_01_14.htm

It is in the same sense in which the relation between two
producers of products for exchange is the cell of bourgsoie
society, that I propose a somewhat more generalised
relation, of which exchange-of-commodities is a special case.

Does that answer or clarify any of the issues you have
raised Paul?

Andy

Paul Dillon wrote:
> Andy,
>
> you wrote: " . . . Vygotsky actually was closer to the mark with
> retaining his focus on interactions between just two individuals in
> order to unlock the dynamics of societal phenomena. Marx had the same
> idea after all with the idea of the commodity relation."
>
> when you say "closer", I think i need clarification, closer to what?
> Unlocking the dynamics of societal phenomena? I'm not clear what that
> means? Maybe it's clearer to others
>
> I'm also not sure what this set of claims implies. Why is developing a
> theory of "societal phenomena" on the basis of dyads closer to the mark?
>
> For one thing, there are clearly social phenomena whose dynamic cannot
> be reduced to dyadic interaction between individuals .In kinship systems
> (as basic a social phenomena as there is) it is not possible to reduce
> a generalized kinship systems, with exchanges between lineages of the
> form (A->B->C->A) to rrestricted exchange, of the form (A<-->B). Like
> squaring a circle..Yet the notion of incest in which the relationships
> between these "groups" is defined constitutes one of the most powerful
> "tool/artefact/3rd order model/ whatever" for the regulation of social
> behavior. e.g., Malinowki's description of the young Trobiand male who
> climbed high up a palm tree and leaped to his death, unable to bear the
> shame of having been discovered sleeping with his "classifcatory"
> matrilateral cousin...
>
> Neither do I understand exactly why you think that Marx's commodity
> theory contained the idea that the interactions of "two individuals"
> unlock the "dynamics of societal phenomena." I feel incompetent to
> comment on whether this "idea" suitably characterizes Vygotsky's
> theories. But I can give my reasons for questioning its applicapbility
> to Marx's theory of commodities.
>
> The analysis of the commodity form in Capital v.I Ch1 provides the
> theoretical cornerstone of Marx's critique of political economy. In
> Marx's critique theoretical categories (value, surplus value, relative
> surplus value, etc.) replace tbe categories of the everyday capitalist
> economic organization (e.g., wage, price, profit.). The derivation of
> these theoretical categories from the commodity form, even the
> identification of the commodity form as the "secret" of the capitalist
> system, constituted the end point of more than a decade of directed
> investigation . The preparatory writings for Capital, e.g. Outline of a
> Critique , Contribution . . ., Grundrisse) do not use the
> commodity-form to generate the economic categories The commodity-form
> in these pre-Capital writings is not the "unit of analysis". To the
> contrary, Marx starts with the the everyday categories of capitalist
> economic organization. Though he identified , the theoretical categories
> of value, surplus value, etc. in the early writings he had not yet
> accounted for or deduced them from the commodity form. The
> identification of the commodity-form as the "germ" for explaining the
> everyday categories comes as s the end result of more than a decade of
> research and analysis of the a phenomena presented in the everday
> categories that hid and fetishized the reality of the social nature of
> commodities themselves.
>
> Marx's analysis of the commodity form has nothing at all to do with
> individuals, either figuratively (human individuals) or logically ( (x=y
> ) => x and y are individuals). .. Rather, there is simply a question
> of equivalence relations between of "products" of human productive
> activity. How much iron equates to how much corn? There is really no
> "individual" involved, The processes are social, the agents exchanging
> the corn and iron might well be companies, collectives. Of course there
> are only two poles here, but that doesn't convert the variables at
> either end of the double arrow into "individuals" in any other than a
> purely formal sense. One could easily (and Marx does) insert n-tuples
> in place of individual variables on either end of the exchange.
>
> This is also true of societies whose economies are not based on the
> production of commodities. Marcel Mauss repeatedly stressed that
> reciprocity relations (pre-commodity economic relations) did not exist
> between individuals, but between groups .
>
> Well, those are my reasons for disagreeing with your claim about
> starting with individuals or dyads to explain "societal phenomena" both
> inparticular, i.e., the nature of the commodity-form, and in general,
> i.e., including non-capitalist "societal phenomena".
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
> --- On *Sat, 12/20/08, Andy Blunden /<ablunden@mira.net>/* wrote:
>
> From: Andy Blunden <ablunden@mira.net>
> Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
> To: phd_crit_think@yahoo.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 5:16 PM
>
> Mike.Martin, on "choosing a unit of analysis": according to the
> 18th/19th century Germans who created this idea, yes of course, it is all about
> tracing the immanent development of the thing itself. But
> history has shown
> surely that tracing the immanent development of the thing itself actually takes
> serious intellectual effort, even once you know what "the thing" is,
> i.e., what particular science or problem needs investigating, which is actually
> a matter of free choice.
>
> Paul, I think your observations about the need to mine the theoretical
> resources of activity theory, rather than invent new models is very wise.
> Whatever we think, I am sure that the future is with one or another variety of
> Activity Theory. And I am personally pretty happy with the first two
> "levels" of Leontyev's system and how they interconnect with each
> other and the third level, viz., activity.
>
> However, I remain of the view that Vygotsky actually was closer to the mark
> with retaining his focus on interactions between just two individuals in order
> to unlock the dynamics of societal phenomena. Marx had the same idea after all
> with the
> idea of the commodity relation.
>
> Andy
>
> Paul Dillon wrote:
> > mike,
> >
> > I don't think the historical questions about the Russian revolution
> and fates of the individual forerunners of CHAT and their work after Stalin took
> control and Trotsky went into exile can help us deal with the central problem
> that you mention: 'The answer with respect to contemporary capitalism then
> becomes the focal topic,"
> >
> > But I think that Engestrom provided a framework for pursuing that answer:
> ie, studying the manifestations of the primary contradiction between use value
> and exchange value. Peter has published a lot on this: e.g., secretaries
> playing solitaire on the computers as an example to their own struggle to
> reappropriate the use value of their time. The problem, to my mind, isn't
> the absence of appropriate theoretical tools in CHAT itself, but the absence
> (with a few exceptions, Helena and
> Peter stand out, who have pursued research
> into these domains. Engestrom "runaway objects" and the dynamics of
> use value/exchange value in the contemporary globalized economy also deserve
> attention since, just as the bourgeoisie in the 16th-18th centuries emerged in
> the interstices of the feudal society with its lord-peasant primary
> contradiction, it would seem that a new class is emerging in the interstices of
> the capitalist contradictions in the dominant society. The
> > resolution of contradictions sublates the contradiction itself in a new
> conceptual order, not the triumph of one of the sides of the previous order.
> >
> > But there are conceptual tools in CHAT for addressing these problems and
> I"m not sure that finding "new models" should replace an
> incomplete exploration of the existing model.
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> > --- On Sat, 12/20/08, Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > From: Mike Cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
> > To: phd_crit_think@yahoo.com, "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Date: Saturday, December 20, 2008, 3:42 PM
> >
> > Paul-- I think this is what Martin was suggesting re activity and unit of
> analysis:
> > I have a problem with Andy's idea of "choosing a unit of
> analysis". Doesn't the unit analysis come out of a process of movement
> from the
> > abstract to the concrete.
> > LSV in T&S was seeking to understand the development of higher
> psychological processes and proposed word meaning as such a unit. I think he
> also thought of it as a germ cell, the development of which he seeks to
> >
> > trace in, for example, the blocks experiment that Paula introduced into
> the
> > discussion and which some of us have been fussing over.
> >
> > And, yes, I
> think that Peter and Anna were focused primarily on the goal
> of consistently exploring how particular social structures,
> > with their power constellations and systems of privilege shape
> > development has not typically been pursued within CHAT".
> >
> > The answer with respect to the USSR is presumably Stalinist hijacking of
> the revolution (or the general wrong headedness of Marx, depending upon
> one's
> >
> > views of that history). The answer with respect to contemporary capitalism
> then becomes the focal topic, although discussion of the paper, including my own
> contributions to it, may obscure that aim (probably a symptom of the problem,
> maybe even a clue to the answer?)
> >
> > mike.
> >
> >
> > And yes, On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 10:06 AM, Paul Dillon
> <phd_crit_think@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Andy, Martin, everyone,
> >
> >
> >
> > I have a
> problem with Andy's idea of "choosing a unit of
> analysis". Doesn't the unit analysis come out of a process of movement
> from the abstract to the concrete, a process that Marx first described in the
> Grundrisse, "The Method of Political Economy"?
> >
> >
> >
> > I haven't read all of Vygotsky, really glad to have gotten mike and
> david's freebies, but as I understand what I have read, didn't he adopt
> a similar procedure when coming up with "word-meaning" as a unit of
> analysis?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I continue to mull over this question of linking the smaller systems of
> social interaction that are the "pan de todos los dias" (can't
> think of a good translation) of CHAT to the larger macro-structures towards
> which Sociology orients itself: class. strata, ideology, forms of authority,
> legitimacy, social structure in general, etc.. Wouldn't these
> "notions" be comparable to the
> abstractions with which we begin the
> journey, they are totally abstract. Marx wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > When we consider a given country politico-economically, we begin
> >
> > with its population, its distribution among classes, town, country, the
> coast,
> >
> > the different branches of production, export and import, annual production
> and
> >
> > consumption, commodity prices etc.
> >
> >
> >
> > It seems to be correct to
> >
> > begin with the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to
> >
> > begin, in economics, with e.g. the population, which is the foundation and
> the
> >
> > subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer
> examination
> >
> > this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for
> >
> > example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in
> turn are an
> >
> > empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest.
> E.g.
> >
> > wage labour, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange,
> division
> >
> > of labour, prices, etc. For example, capital is nothing without wage
> labour,
> >
> > without value, money, price etc. Thus, if I were to begin with the
> population,
> >
> > this would be a chaotic conception [Vorstellung] of the whole, and I
> >
> > would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards
> ever
> >
> > more simple concepts [Begriff], from the imagined concrete towards
> >
> > ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived at the simplest
> determinations.
> >
> >
> >
> > I don't clearly understand Andy's idea of substituting the notion
> of "project" for activity system as a way to go beyond the meso- and
> micro- levels of
> analysis. But perhaps I've begun to grasp why Peter and Ana
> could place Schutz at the most central point of contact between theories
> concerning the manifestation of sociological macro-structures in individual
> "conduct" and theories concerning the intermediate formations on which
> CHAT normally focuses.
> >
> >
> >
> > Are we just trying to hook up theories or are we trying to overcome the
> problem that Peter and Ana indicated in their article: " . . . the goal of
> consistently exploring how particular social structures, with their power
> constellations and systems of privilege shape development has not typically been
> pursued within CHAT". If that type of exploration is the goal
> shouldn't we focus on the dimensions of power, privilege, etc. in activity
> systems, recognizing that these are abstractions which will give way to ever
> finer ones, until we get down to that simplest determination which would
> define
> the correct unit of analysis?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Hmm. . . still muddling along.
> >
> >
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --- On Fri, 12/19/08, ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > From: ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org <ERIC.RAMBERG@spps.org>
> >
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] motive/project
> >
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"
> <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >
> > Date: Friday, December 19, 2008, 9:07
> >
> > AM
> >
> >
> >
> > I certainly have had extended thinking time on this topic lately because I
> >
> > do believe it gets to the heart of the issue at hand. Consider the
> >
> > following sentence:
> >
> >
> >
> > "Appropriate an engaged activity." No motive, no desire just
> a
> >
> > process.
> >
> >
> >
> > It may not fulfill the requested hermeneutic unit of anlaysis but it
> >
> > certainly makes a statement about what does go on in human development in
> >
> > the cultural/societal domain. just a thought
> >
> >
> >
> > eric
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Martin Packer
> >
> >
> >
> > <packer@duq.edu> To:
> "eXtended
> >
> > Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> >
> > Sent by: cc:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > xmca-bounces@web Subject: Re: [xmca]
> >
> > motive/project
> >
> > er.ucsd.edu
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > 12/19/2008 09:47
> >
> >
> >
> > AM
> >
> >
> >
> > Please respond
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > to "eXtended
> >
> >
> >
> > Mind, Culture,
> >
> >
> >
> > Activity"
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Andy,
> >
> >
> >
> > I'm struggling to catch up with piles of xmca messages after a week
> away
> >
> > from the computer, but your comment here caught my attention. Perhaps you
> >
> > would agree with me that the selection of the commodity form as the unit
> >
> > of
> >
> > analysis
> was based on the presumption that it contains the key
> >
> > contradiction
> >
> > of a capitalist economy. This suggests to me that the identification of a
> >
> > unit has to be based on a consideration of the whole in which it is found.
> >
> > And this in turn suggests that there can be no unit of analysis for
> >
> > 'activity' in the abstract, but rather a variety of units each of
> which
> >
> > depends on the concrete whole which one is studying. As you suggest,
> >
> > 'wooing' is an activity that is possible only in the
> 'world' -
> >
> > the form of
> >
> > life - of romance. So, when we select a unit we will need to acknowledge
> >
> > both the spatial and temporal discontinuities among distinct forms of
> life.
> >
> >
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> >
> > On 12/18/08 9:34 PM, "Andy Blunden"
> <ablunden@mira.net>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >> f I sing to my beloved while standing outside
> >
> >> in the rain, in what sense am I "using" something? There is
> >
> >> a school of thinking that would say, it makes me
> >
> > feel nice
> >
> >> to be wooing my beloved, therefore I am using her to make me
> >
> >> feel nice. But all that is really bankrupt, isn't it? We
> >
> >> have to get into the idea of romance and find in the
> >
> >> figuring of the world according to a concept of romance, a
> >
> >> set of motives, which motivate the series of related
> >
> >> practices which make up the universe of romantic activity.
> >
> >> "Use" applies OK only to a resicted sense of motivation.
> >
> >
> >> Andy
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > xmca mailing list
> >
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> >
> > xmca mailing list
> >
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> >
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> >
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> >
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> >
>
>
> -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 Skype andy.blunden
> Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
> http://www.marxists.org/admin/books/index.htm
>
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Blunden http://home.mira.net/~andy/ +61 3 9380 9435 
Skype andy.blunden
Hegel's Logic with a Foreword by Andy Blunden:
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