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2019 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

3. Coquetting with Dialectics

verfasst von : Robert X. Ware

Erschienen in: Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Many have attributed a unique and uniquely successful methodology of dialectics to Marx. Others regard dialectics as a disaster of obscurity and confusion, if not meaninglessness. Many now hold that Engels foisted a rigid “formalization” of dialectics on Marx’s work, and yet Marx coquetted with dialectics making positive references here and there. Analytical Marxists have almost universally rejected dialectics in Marxism, turning to clear analyses instead. This chapter, from a perspective of analytical philosophy, begins with an analysis of Marx’s own methodology and then contests some core claims about methodology by analytical Marxists, with primary focus on philosophical questions about methodological individualism and about mechanisms. With a more open understanding, one can see the plausibility for Marx, and Marxists, to coquette with dialectics.

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Vorheriges Kapitel Methodological Beginnings

Nächstes Kapitel Fettered Forces and New Found Freedom

For a general discussion of dialectics, see Roy Bhaskar, Dialectic in Bottomore (1991, pp. 143–150) and Wilde (1991).

A good place to begin in understanding Marx’s relation to Hegel is Norman Levine (2012, with an extensive bibliography), Wilde (1991), and Bhaskar, Dialectic in Bottomore (1991).

Engels was the one who wrote extensively on Hegel’s dialectic, and, like Marx, he was “no longer a Hegelian,” but he held “a deep feeling of piety and devotion for the titanic old fellow” (Engels to Lange, 29 March 1865; MECW 42, p. 138).

This seems to be a rather different view of Marx’s method than Carver suggests in a focus on Engels with such ideas, but I think Marx’s comments are clear about what he was doing. See Carver (1983, pp. 96–117), where he concludes that Engels “invented [Marxist] dialectics” (p. 117). My focus is on Marx, and I mention Engels’ work for confirmation or clarification of what Marx said.

For a discussion of a more extensive use of Hegel by Marx, see Uchida, who claims that the “Grundrisse is the most suitable text for studying the relation of [Marx’s] critique of political economy to [Hegel’s] Logic” (Uchida 1988, p. 6).

In an important and interesting work, Tony Smith argues adroitly for the position that Marx’s goal “is nothing more that the Hegelian goal of reconstructing the world in thought through working out a systematic theory of categories” (Smith 1990, p. 35; see also Smith 1993). I see Marx as less tied to Hegel’s methodology and more focused on the goal of developing a scientific theory about real phenomena, a view that is also more congenial to retrieving his work on the basis of contemporary observations and theorizing.

Some will appreciate his quips about German philosophy, for example, when he quotes Goethe: “words are excellent for fighting with, with words a system may be built” (MECW 24, p. 547). Or as Marx and Engels wrote in The German Ideology, the “imaginary rising above the world is the ideological expression of the impotence of philosophers in face of the world” (MECW 5, p. 379). None of this is true of his “analytic method” of the real world—or good contemporary analytic philosophy!

Philosophical positions, for example, about the fundamental nature of reality, were not topics of discussion or analysis for Marx, but he said enough to indicate that he thought the world was composed only of matter, including anything thought to be spiritual or mental. The mind, the will, and spirit, if they are anything, are on this view compatible with the material (physical) world. Compatibilism was developed in depth by David Hume (1711–1776) and is almost universally held by philosophers, and others, today. Marx was almost certainly also a realist, believing that there is a real world independent of the mind (materially understood).

Of course metaphysical materialism is different from any form of historical materialism, according to which material things, for example, productive forces, are determining conditions of social relations such as economic power and political institutions.

Positivism has a long, complex, and distinguished history that would take at least a book to discuss and still not have an agreed resolution. Marx did not go into the philosophical details and of course worked before many of the developments, especially in the last century. The issues and ideas get even more confused in most of those who wrote about Marx. It is Marx’s investigations, and analyses, that is the focus in this chapter.

The idea of a category mistake was developed and explicated by the important Oxford analytical philosopher Gilbert Ryle. See Ryle (1949, pp. 18–23). It may be a pragmatic rather than conceptual mistake.

Here I pass over a lot of good philosophical discussions of perception and knowledge about which there are still plausible positivist contributions. My focus is on critics who seem to mischaracterize the methods that Marx followed.

For a good discussion of another aspect (and criticism) of positivism, the covering-law model about cause and effect, see Richard Miller (“Replacing Positivism” in Miller 1984, pp. 271–313) on “the [Marxist] mode of production theory … as a successful theory of how change takes place” (p. 292).

Andrew Levine (2003, p. 68). Levine also notes other forms of holism (discussed below) that recognizes (but Levine questions) lesser wholes of constituents that cannot be understood by the constituents alone.

It should not be an “a priori beginning point,” as David Harvey tells us, nor should it be something that is chosen because, as Harvey suggests, it is “something that is familiar to us all” (Harvey 2010, p. 15). If there are reasons for a beginning, presumably they should be scientific.

I knew Cohen personally for over 40 years and always regarded his work with the utmost admiration and continue to feel the loss of a great Marxist intellect since his death in 2009. Nevertheless, I demur at counting him and a couple of others as the founders of analytical Marxism. Many analytical philosophers turned to Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s, with Cohen certainly being an important leader. I also think it is misleading to think of analytical philosophy having techniques. I continue in the text to criticize some of Cohen’s “oppositions,” but all in the style of analytical philosophy that we practised together.

See Wood (2004, p. 97) on ascribing interests to groups as well as to individuals, which “is closely connected to several other concepts: what benefits it, what is good for it, what makes it well off” all of which apply to collectives, classes, and corporations. Thus, corporations can be interested in merging with other corporations and be responsible for polluting the atmosphere. Elsewhere, I have discussed responsibility of collective agents partly because of such features. (See Ware, 2014; see also Graham 2002 and 1992 (especially pp. 24–34) on collectives.)

An influential leader or outside wealthy lobbyist might decide the results, but such “participants” do not make the decision. See Chap. 9 on emancipatory democracy for more on the relevant distinction.

There is now a substantive body of literature on group action, including, very selectively, Gilbert (2000), Graham (2002, Chap. 3), Tollefsen (2015), Tuomela (1995, 2013), Ware (1988, 2014).

Further examples and classifications, based on an earlier manuscript of mine, are given in Tuomela (1995, pp. 249–253). This natural comparison, of course, does not prove a metaphysical point, however that would be done.

It appears that once Marx “coquetted” with the dialectic, it was natural for him to look to collectives rather than simple cause and effect, but one does not have to be a dialectician to get to a plausible form of methodological holism.

See Matthen and Ware (1994), Wright et al. (1992), and Wimsatt (1980).

Chomsky’s point in “The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden” (Chomsky 2016, pp. 81–127) is that some aspects of the world, including gravity and consciousness, are inconceivable to our common-sense beliefs and conceptions. An understanding of this, no doubt, was an influence in the new directions in natural science towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Hedström and Swedberg recognize the history in nineteenth-century physics and that the word “mechanism” is not used in physics, but they try to justify that it is still appropriate in social sciences (Hedström and Swedberg 1998, p. 2n4).

Engels seemed to show an openness to new developments, which does not suit the systematic logic that he apparently wanted, as he followed the unifying work on chemistry and physics in the late nineteenth century. He must have gone beyond Marx in seeing the influence of Hegel in a new dawn of philosophy such that although “[n]atural scientists [and presumably social scientists] may adopt whatever attitude they please, they are still under the domination of philosophy” (MECW 25, p. 491).

Note: References to the work of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx are from Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works. 50 Volumes, 1975–2004. New York, NY: International Publishers. (Referred to in text as “MECW” with volume and page).

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———. 2002. Practical Reasoning in a Social World. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

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———. 1993. Dialectical Social Theory and Its Critics. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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———. 2013. Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

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Titel: Coquetting with Dialectics
verfasst von: Robert X. Ware
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97715-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-97716-4

Copyright-Jahr: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97716-4_3