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These files are maintained strictly for historical reference, research, and recordkeeping purposes,
and the content has not been altered or updated since archiving.
Content on this site may not meet current digital accessibility standards.
If you require an alternative, accessible format of any information found on this site,
please contact Bruce Jones, bjones@ucsd.edu to request an accommodation.
Greg,Lenin's rising from the empirical to the universal is actually the /opposite /of rising from the abstract to the concrete. This does not mean that Lenin was wrong or anything, because you will see in the excerpt from the Grundrisse that I sent that Marx is pointing to a/ 2-phase/ movement: from the concrete of immediate perception to the abstract universal, and then, by reconstructing the process in thought, rising back from the abstract universal to the real concrete. Marx explains this in more readable terms than you find in either Lenin's gloss of Hegel's Logic or in the Logic itself.
Also, when you read that excerpt of the Grundrisse, don't stop at the explanation of the two processes, read to the end of the section, because there is a fine rendering by Marx of his critique of Hegel there and a foundation for activity theory.
Andy Greg Thompson wrote:
Still in between boxes but came across this quote from Lenin today: ‘In order to understand it is necessary empirically to begin understanding, study, to rise, from empiricism to the universal. In order to learn to swim it is necessary to get into the water<http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm#LCW38_205> ’. (found at: http://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/pilling3.htm) and it reminded me of one of mike's favorite statements "rising to the concrete." Yet Mike's phrase appears quite different. So Mike, if you're out there, does your "rising to the concrete" bear any significant relation to Lenin's rising to the universal? They seem like very different concepts, no? -greg
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *Andy Blunden* Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/ Book: http://www.brill.nl/concepts __________________________________________ _____ xmca mailing list xmca@weber.ucsd.edu http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca