6 september 2000
from peter jones, sheffield hallam university
The discussion on Ilyenkovs ideal is fascinating. I just wanted to make a few
points as I have hogged discussion enough this summer. Firstly on the political
angle. Colleagues have mentioned the difficult circumstances under which
Ilyenkov and his colleagues worked. Ilyenkov indeed suffered from the
ministrations, censorship and repressive activity of the regime on different
occasions and in different ways (although his work was also celebrated). But
Ilyenkov was an absolutely sincere marxist and communist (with a small c). His
political and economic writings (none of which have so far appeared in english
to my knowledge) posthumously published in the 1991 collected works volume show
him as a trenchant marxist critic of official soviet ideology and socialist
economics and there is no wonder these things were not published (or perhaps
were not even submitted for publication) during his lifetime. Secondly, there
are interesting differences of agreement on the interpretation and scope of
ilyenkovs conception of the ideal for which I refer colleagues who are
interested to my critique of david bakhursts, and mikes and yrjos
interpretation of the ideal (which is on nates website I think). There is a
more considered version forthcoming in an Iscrat volume edited by seth chaiklin
and a paper attempting to develop the links between ideality and semiotic
mediation in the volume mentioned by jan derry, edited by vesa oittinnen. I
should add that jan, for one, does not agree with my critique and I have doubts
about it myself so there you go. Thirdly, on the relation between the ideal and
the symbolic. As colleagues have mentioned, ilyenkov develops his concept of
the ideal on the basis of marxs treatment of the value form, specifically the
money form of value. Why? Clearly the value form is a historically specific
social form and not universal. And, indeed, ilyenkov makes it clear elsewhere
that the primary, basic or universal form of ideality is typified by language
(the word). His argument, then, is that marxs treatment is the most detailed,
thorough and scientifically developed treatment of a typical case of ideality
and that through Marxs treatment the dialectic of the transformation of a
thing into a symbol, and of a symbol into a token, is traced on the example
of the origin and evolution of the money form of value. Elsewhere he notes
that Marx shows how the symbol, the sign, is generated in this process along
with other subtle things (poor translation, sorry). However, ilyenkov is not
saying that the ideal is a linguistic thing (or other type of symbolic thing)
per se, although it is inevitably embodied, formed through such symbolic
means which serve as its transient metamorphosis (if I remember the quote
correctly). Ultimately he is trying to elucidate marxs conception of the
labour process which ends in the creation of something which, when the process
began, already existed in the workers imagination, already existed in an ideal
form(Marx, capital). How can the result of activity exist at the beginning of
activity? only ideally which means that it exists in a form quite different
(and yet identical) to the form it takes as the result, at the end, of
activity. It must exist at the beginning as a thing, but a thing which is the
form of another thing the form of a thing to be produced through activity.
Hence the necessary symbolic quality of the ideal, as a representation of
something else (of what is to come). As Ilyenkov puts it: In thinking [the
ideal] is generated before the contradictions will be resolved in reality i.e.
before its own objective realisation. This original position, when the image is
born earlier than the object which it reflects, also creates the whole
difficulty of the problem of the ideal, unresolvable for metaphysical
materialism with its version of the theory of reflection. The object as an
immediately visible thing does not yet exist while its image is already
there(1991, p. 210). And further, he argues that: By ideality or the
ideal, materialism has to mean that quite specific - and identifiable by
strict criteria [strogo fiksiruemoe] - correlation between (at least) two
material objects (things, processes, events, states) within which one material
object, while remaining itself, takes on the role of representative of the
other object, or, more exactly, of the universal nature of this other object,
the universal form and law of this other object (1991, p. 253). Finally, on
the ideal and consciousness. Colleagues have made the point that ilyenkov is
not talking about consciousness in general, he is not trying to find some
general definition of consciousness. I think he is trying to explain how the
labour process in marxs terms is possible how it is possible for people to
consciously plan productive activity and the implications of that for human
thinking and consciousness. I understand his point to be that ideality involves
the production within activity of a system of special objects in which the
goal, process, result of activity is (re-)presented in a form separate from the
actual activity itself: the ideal is only there where the form itself of the
activity corresponding to the form of the external object is transformed for
man into a special object with which he can operate specially without touching
and without changing the real object up to a certain point. Man, and only man,
ceases to be merged with the form of his life activity; he separates it from
himself and, giving it his attention, transforms it into an idea (1974/1977a:
278). It is because through the labour process human beings make their own
activities, their own goals, their own relations etc into special things to
which they can give their attention (and thereby come to know and attempt to
alter) that the ideal is so intimately connected with consciousness (in the
human sense). Right Ill cut and run at this point.
All the very best to everyone
P
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