This notion comes from one of the few passages where Marx talks explicitly
about method in the Introduction to the Grundrisse (p 100-1, Penguin
edition). Marx attacks the method of the early political economists as he
states that it is only possible to grasp and truly understand the concrete
by means of the mediation of abstract concepts. He then goes on to
differentiate his view from Hegelian idealism and to develop the relation
between the logical and historical development in what is often called his
'logico-historical method'. Here is the complete passage from the highly
useful Marx-Engels Internet Archive:
'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 - literally standing before BR] of the whole, and I
would then, by means of further determination, move analytically towards
ever more simple concepts [Begriff - literally means of grasping BR], from
the imagined concrete towards ever thinner abstractions until I had arrived
at the simplest determinations. From there the journey would have to be
retraced until I had finally arrived at the population again, but this time
not as the chaotic conception of a whole, but as a rich totality of many
determinations and relations. The former is the path historically followed
by economics at the time of
its origins. The economists of the seventeenth century, e.g., always begin
with the living whole, with population, nation, state, several states, etc.;
but they always conclude by discovering through analysis a small number of
determinant, abstract, general relations such as division of labour, money,
value, etc. As soon as these individual moments had been more or less firmly
established and abstracted, there began the economic systems, which ascended
from the simple relations, such as labour, division of labour, need,
exchange value, to the level of the state, exchange between nations and the
world market. The latter is obviously the scientifically correct method. The
concrete is
concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity
of the diverse. It appears in the process of thinking, therefore, as a
process of concentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even
though it is the point of departure in reality and hence also the point of
departure for observation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path
the full conception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination;
along the second, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of
the concrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion of
conceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probing
its own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas the
method of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in which
thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in the
mind.'
'But this is by no means the process by which the concrete itself comes into
being. For example, the simplest economic category, say e.g. exchange value,
presupposes population, moreover a population producing in specific
relations; as well as a certain kind of family, or commune, or state, etc.
It can never exist other than as an abstract, one-sided relation within an
already given, concrete, living whole. As a category, by contrast, exchange
value leads an antediluvian existence. Therefore, to the kind of
consciousness -- and this is characteristic of the philosophical
consciousness -- for
which conceptual thinking is the real human being, and for which the
conceptual world as such is thus the only reality, the movement of the
categories appears as the real act of production -- which only,
unfortunately, receives a jolt from the outside -- whose product is the
world; and -- but this is again a tautology -- this is correct in so far as
the concrete totality is a totality of thoughts, concrete in thought, in
fact a product of thinking and comprehending; but not in any way a product
of the concept which thinks and generates itself outside or above
observation and conception; a product, rather, of the working-up of
observation and conception into concepts. The totality as it appears in
the head, as a totality of thoughts, is a product of a thinking head, which
appropriates the world in the only way it can, a way different from the
artistic, religious, practical and mental appropriation of this world. The
real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as
before; namely as long as the head's conduct is merely speculative, merely
theoretical. Hence, in the theoretical method, too, the subject, society,
must always be kept in mind as the presupposition. But do not these simpler
categories also have an independent historical or natural existence
predating
the more concrete ones? That depends. Hegel, for example, correctly begins
the Philosophy of Right with possession, this being the subject's simplest
juridical relation. But there is no possession preceding the family or
master -- servant relations, which are far more concrete relations. However,
it would be correct to say that there are families or clan groups which
still merely possess, but have no property. The simple category therefore
appears in relation to property as a relation of simple
families or clan groups. In the higher society it appears as the simpler
relation of a developed organization. But the concrete substratum of which
possession is a relation is always presupposed. One can imagine an
individual savage as possessing something. But in that case possession is
not a juridical relation. It is incorrect that possession develops
historically into the family. Possession, rather, always presupposes this
'more concrete juridical category'. There would still always remain
this much, however, namely that the simple categories are the expressions of
relations within which the less developed concrete may have already realized
itself before having posited the more many-sided connection or relation
which is mentally expressed in the more concrete category; while the more
developed concrete preserves the same category as a subordinate relation.
Money may exist, and did exist historically, before capital existed, before
banks existed, before wage labour
existed, etc. Thus in this respect it may be said that the simpler category
can express the dominant relations of a less developed whole, or else those
subordinate relations of a more developed whole which already had a historic
existence before this whole developed in the direction expressed by a more
concrete category. To that extent the path of abstract thought, rising from
the simple to the combined, would correspond to the real historical
process.'
Thinking as I put this together, I am slightly puzzled by where Vygotsky got
the concept and whether it is spelled out anywhere else in Marx because the
Grundrisse was only published in the USSR in 1939 after he was dead. Can
anyone shed any light on this?
Hope this is useful, Rochel, and doesn't break too many mailboxes.
Bruce Robinson