Confronting Our Role: Change is Inevitable, Liberation Is Not
Posted by Mike E on February 6, 2009
There is not an unfolding of necessary outcome
“Revolution is not a simple leap from one quantum state to another — where the ‘next notch’ or groove is pre-defined and out there in the future — waiting for us.”
“There is no fate or inevitability to it. There is only potential — which is seized or not. And along side the potential for revolutionary change there is (equally real) the pulls against it — the complexity of modern society, the weight of tradition, the power of reaction. We don’t just set the machinery of the revolution rolling, and then see the necessary forces arise and follow. Change needs to be literally carved out of the turmoil and raw material of real events — in ways that are not pre-fab.”
by Mike Ely
TNL writes:
“I don’t believe that anything is preordained, least of all something so contingent on the transformation of human sujectivities as communist revolution. At the same time I don’t believe the course of history is purely random. I believe that there are complex yet describable processes of interaction between social structures and emergent subjectivities. I believe, for example, that the constitution of a world capitalist market creates new possibilities for global human solidarity and therefore for world communist revolution and that such a thing would be a desirable advance on our current condition as a species and should be fought for. There is nothing at all inevitable about this, but it is an emergent possibility that manifests itself in various ways in the realms of both theory and practice.”
Chuck writes over several posts:
“..I think your agnostic stance toward the course of history is unsatisfactory from a revolutionary perspective. Yes, “the constitution of a world capitalist market creates possibilities for global solidarity.” And, yes, it also undermines those possibilities. These observations are both true, but banal. The question for revolutionaries is how to enter, and transform, the historical process and to do that we need to do more than just note “possibilities.” We need to determine the course of history, make a judgment about that course, and then either stop it, expedite it, or divert it….
“So, what do you think is plausible: an abyss or worldwide proletarian revolution? Those sound like radically different possibilities to me.”
What would be wrong with acknowledging the objective co-existance “radically different possibilities”?
Is there really a single “course of history” that we can make a single “judgment” about?
What would be strange about the fact that a complex process involving human being could face radically different outcomes?
and what would be wrong about revolutionaries excavating and describing those “radically different possibilities” and then seeking to marshal forces behind the most liberating of those possibilities?
Previously, in communist history, it was often asserted that a communist outcome was inevitable — though there were major differences in how such inevitability were conceived. And sometimes in those schema the role of both communists and the people was to act as instruments of that unfolding inevitability — and (to the extent that their subjective role was acknowledged) as historical actors mainly accelerating an objectively “unfolding” process.
Chuck writes:
“And, furthermore, if you actually think history is heading toward the abyss, then you’ve departed from Marx in a major way, given that Marx was an enlightenment thinker with a progressive view of historical development.”
Marx was not nearly the worst offender when it came to one-sided assumptions of progress. But more to the point, what would be the problem with “departing from Marx”? Would it be so strange that a century and a half after the founding of communist theory some key elements would need to be redeveloped? (Darwin thought acquired traits could be inherited, so his theory needed a deep restructuring based on genetic discoveries. Isn’t such development expected? Is it somehow a taint on Darwin’s great work?)
I think that one key transformation we have to carry through in the development of a reconceived revolutionary project is the acknowledgment of multiple possible outcomes — and to develop a renewed sense of the need for active conscious intervention and creativity in carving out a revolutionary and liberating outcome. It means lowered assumptions about the applicability of models, or the universality of previous forms — and it means re-acknowledging something that should have been obvious: that there is a heavy creative burden involved in the process of creating a radically different new functioning form of society, and that this burden requires the critical thinking and continual invention of all the players in the process (meaning not just a few leaders, but the people themselves, and even the hostile critics of the revolution).
Revolution is not a simple leap from one quantum state to another — where the “next notch” or groove is pre-defined and out there in the future — waiting for us.
There are objectively existing frameworks and constraints within which revolutionary change happens, but the forms and transitions aren’t preordained or “there for the taking.” capitalism-in-power has taken a dozen different political and social forms (and feudalism-in-power has been remarkably diverse) — so why assume socialist transition travels a road with one or two (or five) decreed forms. Previous socialist revolutions had great compulsions to unify and defend large social formations in a hostile world (in Russia and China)… and those conditions gave rise to particular states and party forms. But those are not inevitable or inherent — they bore the markings of particular places and times, and they bore the markings of particular decisions by living players (operating within particular frameworks of ideas and assumptions).
Redflags says, the current capitalist system is already an abyss for billions of people on earth. Yes. And (I think we need to add) we can see the possibility (the material basis) for sharp turns for the worse (ecological disasters, global epidemics of famine, the possibility of new nuclear strikes in our lifetimes, deepening collapse of some social formations etc.)
I have never liked the banner “socialism or barbarism” — because in its Euro-context it was often meant literally, in the sense that capitalism would be reverting to earlier, pre-”civilized” forms of society. The slogan tapped into colonialist European self-designations as “civilization” and their perception of the alternative (and the outer rings of humanity) as “barbaric” or “savage.”
In fact the real choice is not socialism or barbarism — it has always been socialism or more capitalism (in a world where capitalism has proven more brutal and horrific than any of the mythic “barbarism” of Attila or Shaka Zulu or Carib “cannibals.”)
The idea that revolution and communism were inevitable was often taken (in a very instrumentalist way) as a quasi-religious comfort and spur — as a credo of confidence that, no matter how difficult the defeat looked, History (if not God) was on our side. In Germany communists would mutter or sing “Trotz Allem!” (Meaning: “despite everything” our day is coming) and even assume “Nach Hitler, uns” (Meaning: After Hitler’s moment in the sun, things will roll our way.)
If the twentieth century (and especially the restoration of capitalism everywhere) has shown the ability of oppression to morph and adapt and restore itself – then the experience underscores the importance of “the subjective role and consciousness of human beings.”
The Internationale anthem announces “We must ourselves decide our duty, we must decide and do it well.”
I think a break with teleological thinking among communists has widespread implications. As TNL says, it need not mean that there are no larger trendlines or patterns in human development. It does not mean that there is not an objective and explosive tension between the socialization of production and the privatization of appropriation. It does not mean (imho) that we need to abandon historical materialism for a theory of formless uber-contingency.
Instead the “relative autonomy” of ideas, movements and human players reveals itself, acting within an objectively existing system and its objectively existing crises.
There is no fate or inevitability to it. There is only potential — which is seized or not. And along side the potential for revolutionary change there is (equally real) the pulls against it — the complexity of modern society, the weight of tradition, the power of reaction.
We don’t just set the machinery of the revolution rolling, and then see the necessary forces arise and follow. Change needs to be literally carved out of the turmoil and raw material of real events — in ways that are not pre-ordained or pre-fab.
The system produces its gravediggers, over and over, but their training, awakening, deployment and self-consciousness is far from automatic.
I think that we have much to draw from the experience of the twentieth century, and from decades of rather sharp struggle over revolutionary philosophy…. And among them is that revolution is not a process that “just happens” — but something that is made on the basis of human insight, determination and conjunctural factors.
Revolution arises from unpredictable mixtures of creative design and perfect storm.
Keith said
Mike, I think when you say we need to break from “teleological” thinking you are making a mistake. Marx is a teleological thinker and teleology has to do with potentialities. That idea that communisms “will just happen” is not teleology it is juts stupid. Marx, Hegel, and Aristotle were all teleological thinkers and even if we don’t approach them with reverent awe it is safe to say that they did not hold views that are just idiotic. In other words, I want to suggest that we spend a little time studying what Marx, Hegel, and Aristotle meant by teleology. Briefly, (we discussed this in other threads) teleology is the development of the thing or phenomenon’s potentialities. The example I used before was an acorn becoming an oak tree. Every acorn will not be an oak tree but if an acorn is going to grow and develop into something it will be an oak tree (acorns don’t become tulips). The wikkipedia article says teleology is the study of “purpose.” This is sort of true but then you are committed to saying an oak tree is an acorn’s purpose. So, the wikipedia article is a fine intro to the subject but there is much more to it.
Capitalism is like the acorn, communism is the oak tree (that metaphor is not meant to deny the likelihood and a more disruptive and leap-based path of development). The best book on this is Scott Miekle’s “Essentialism in the thought of Karl Marx.”
redflags said
I wasn’t a fan of the word “barbarism” until I spent some time in Central Florida.
Mike E said
Keith: this is a major topic which (as you say) should be studied. And the issue is (in many ways) whether objectively exiting processes in nature and society have some “purpose.”
I am not arguing that Marx was a teleological thinker — in some defining way — but that there are currents and assumptions within inherited Marxism that are teleological, and need to be looked at critically.
Does an acorn have a characteristic way of negation? Are oak trees the purpose of acorns? why is rotting on the ground less of a purpose or less characteristic than sprouting? Where would such “purpose” come from?
Does capitalism emerge to create the basis for socialism? Or didn’t it just emerge, doesn’t it just exist (without transcendent purpose), and yet objectively produce within itself, the possibility of other forms of existence.
There are trends, arcs, conflicting patterns, and tendencies within complex processes like capitalism. But they don’t have any purpose or inherent/characteristic way of negation.
There is not a trend in nature from simple to complex, or . from lower to higher. The very idea of “lower and higher” in nature and society is highly subjective (riddled with assumptions) and does not in fact reflect something objective. Is a crocodile lower or higher than an ape? Is homo sapien “higher” than whales, or sharks? by what standard?
“Lower to higher” is neither some objectively existing direction nor an inevitable feature of development.
There has emerged a loose trend in human society which over the last ten thousand years that produced leaps in the productive forces. This happened after literally a million years of Homo existance that had relatively little change in productive forms. (The “neolithic revolution” of domesticating animals represented the major nodal point, and then the development of farming surpluses, classes and urban life was another.)
This development happened, objectively. i’m not sure it was necessary, or inevitable, or had a purpose.
There were many counter trends (many civilizations rose then “fell” with accompanying drops in the productive forces).
But overall, human society has “developed” — and parallel to that productive development have come a number of remarkable changes in society, ideas, human organization, etc.
But this was hardly inevitable, and the next possible leaps are also not inevitable or predetermined by the arc of the past.
Chuck Morse said
[for what it’s worth, i wrote this comment before reading the three above comments from Keith, Redlags, and Mike]
Hi Mike,
In reply to the questions that you pose in the post above, I do not believe that Marx (or most other revolutionary socialists) conceived of revolution as a synonym for “really big and dramatic changes,” but rather as the moment in the evolution of universal human history in which humanity passes from one epoch to another. Although that moment may be big and dramatic, the essential thing is the emergence of a new epoch in which subjective and objective factors condition one another in entirely new ways.
And, sure, there are always counter-tendencies in any given epoch, as Marx demonstrated quite well (e.g., think of his comments about the existence of capitalism in the intercises of the ancient world).
But the existence of counter-tendencies does not change the fact that an epoch is either one thing or another, and you’re either for it or against it, In my view, taking an agnostic stance–construing history as a medley of “forces” and “possibilities”–is incoherent and, frankly, an abdication of responsibility.
redflags said
Here’s a way of looking at tendency:
The three big Spanish-speaking islands in the Caribbean are Puerto Rico (colony), Cuba (sovereign republic) and the Dominican Republic (neo-colony). Despite their different political histories and slightly different racial demographics, all three of them have roughly similar proportions of their population living in the United States and to depend on remittances. So, whatever the choices made in terms of politics – they still have very similar social issues. This isn’t to say anything is inevitable, rather – similar sets of demographics and conditions give rise to similar tendencies. Which is to say tendency or telos is contained in given contradictions, which can be known and acted on. “We make the world, but we don’t chose the world we get to make.”
Keith said
The problem is the term “purpose.” Which implies a transcendent consciousness or purpose giver. But purpose is not what Marx means by teleology, teleology is potential, a potential course of development. An acorn may rot on the ground, be used as a ball in a kids game, or grow into an oak tree, but it will never grow into a tulip. The difference between growing into an oak tree and the other examples is that the others are accidents with determinations outside of the acorn. The potential to become an oak tree is essential to the acorn it is its nature. Being a ball in a kids game is a complete accident and has nothing to do with the acorn.
The difference is what Marx studied with his method of abstraction. Marx was a teleological thinker, Marxism is a teleological science. No one has to be a Marxist but that is what Marxism is.
transprog said
For what it’s worth the word telos means goal. This makes me see an element of human agency in teleological theory. Historical progression then has a goal, which the reaching of that goal depends on human agency. It’s therefore not inevitable.
Also I want some clarification as to the acorn/oak tree analogy. If the capitalism is an acorn and communism is the oak tree, then what is the potential that the acorn, if/when it develops becomes something else, like say a tulip? Are you arguing that capitalism will either not develop or, if it does, can only develop into communism?
Chuck Morse said
I agree with Keith’s comments in comment #6. And the meaning of Marxism is not clarified by simply stating that “Mao said . . .” or “Lenin said …” or “The Nepalese Maoists said…” etc. People say all kinds of things, including Marxists, but not every comment made by a Marxist is consistent with Marxism.
Mike E said
chuck writes:
Why don’t you expand on this?
You seem to posit a single Marxism that somehow exists (pre-exists) — independent of what Marxists say. Where is it?
In fact there are several Marxisms, or (to put it another way) Marxism had developed along different paths (some emphasizing this and negating that, others emphasizing that and disparaging this.)
You say “Not every comment made by a Marxist is consistent with Marxism.” I assume that every major analysis by a working Marxist has both continuity and discontinuity with previous Marxism. And the question is (each time) are these justified or unjustified continuities and discontinuities?
Obviously something is neither true nor Marxist simply because Lenin or Mao said it. But it is the case that their statements on Marxism and philosophy reflect important currents and positions within its development.
I once heard a lecture by Stephen J. Gould where he emphasized the “bushiness of evolution” — that humans did not emerged from a single apelike line that slowly changed over millions of years. But that the descendants of early apes broke into many lines, including many competing hominid lines, that coexisted in Africa and elsewhere — that there was a bush of human descent.
Similarly, i think that there is a falseness to the assumptions of Avakian’s view of “three milestones” in the book Harvest of Dragons — where marxism develops in three great leaps, tidily form the work of three great men, and emerges as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In fact it has always been more bushy. Various pursuits and strains have cross-fertilized in ways that are real (if not acknowledged). Or else the cross fertilization was not real enough, and the theory became sterile and exhausted.
redflags said
I think Chuck is arguing that there is a Marxism, that exists as a coherent, definable and complete category. It is, as he has argued consistently on this site, already defined and insofar as none of us seem to be the kind of Marxist which is, in fact, a Marxist, we must first recognize that real Marxism is what anti-communists (and more specifically post-structuralists) have argued it is… then we can get on with the business of dealing with now.
Chuck Morse said
Redflags, I think you’ve paraphrased my views more or less fairly, although I am not a post-structuralist or an anti-communist in the sense that I think that you mean it . . .
For the purposes of this discussion, I would simply say that I think that Marxism has some basic, definable premises and, if you reject these, then you are no longer a Marxist. For instance, a materialist analysis of history; a commitment to the existence of A universal history; a progressive view of historical development; the commitment to the proletariat as the revolutionary class under capitalism; . . . these are some of the big premises of Marxism, in my view.
redflags said
I was just playing the categorical game… but we can stop if you want. ;)
Mike E said
the problem with that, Chuck, is that you are stuck in a repeating loop…. (Not all your contributions are in that loop, but it seems to define some nagging mission you feel compelled to pursue.)
You assert to us your assumptions about this pre-existing Marxism, you assert that it has proven wrong, and you assert that we have no right to explore a non-closed view of Marxism.
Aren’t those arguments embedded in your assumptions (at each level)?
What would compel anyone (other than you) to privilege your particular set of assumptions about what is basic to “Marxism.”
(And let’s not forget that some of your assumptions about marxism — that is has a particular view of the european working class, that it is wedded to a series of “predictions — are quite outside of any framework that many of us would assume for Marxism.)
Who is to decide which premises are “basic” and which are not?
And, on another level, who cares about the label say? Let’s say you persevere and somehow get others to announce “Ok, our philosophy crayola has now crossed the lines that Chuck laid down for Marxism.” What will that mean or accomplish, in your opinion? It wouldn’t effect our project or our beliefs one iota. We struggle to “know things to change things”…. what relevance is it whether it falls inside or outside what you (Chuck) consider basic to Marxism?
And isn’t it emcompassed by the convention (among marxists) to say “Marxism has been surpassed, and we now have Marxism-Leninism….Marxism-Leninism has now been surpassed, we now have a new syntesis Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.”
We were always free (at every point) to discard or revise “basic tenets” or predictions — and simply declare them superseded. Is that so wrong?
Certainly I don’t share this view of Marxism as a closed system with fixed “premises” — but beyond that, I also just don’t get the relevance of your repeated argument that we don’t know what marxism really is.
Especially because your view of Marxism seems somewhat fixed (and religious to me). Who would want to insist on such a view of marxism?
And since we don’t fear being called heretics (yet again!)… what impact does the loop have? (*shrugs*)
I can’t imagine any theory not going through development and transformation (under the dual assault of experience and new creative thinking). I can’t imagine embracing any theory that doesn’t experience both continuity and discontinuity.
As for myself, i don’t see the value of pinning our theory and movement to a person’s name, anyway. Why not call it “communist theory” and then affirm (at each point, through struggle) what its premises are (and which are basic or not)?
Chuck Morse said
Mike, as I see it, identifying Marxism’s strengths and weaknesses–figuring out where it is or is not relevant–is an important part of devising a revolutionary theory and practice for our times. To do that, we need to be very clear about what Marxism is and is not. That’s why I care about categorical distinctions (and it’s not a game to me, Redflags).
Of course you are entitled to describe yourselves with whatever terminology that you think appropriate. That’s not my concern. What interests me, and what draws me to this site, is the attempt to explore the confrontation between revolutionary doctrines and reality. Such explorations are really important, I think.
Keith said
Transporg, here is how Scott Meikle, author of “Essentialism in the thought of Karl Marx” defines telos:
“The form, state, or condition towards which an entity develops by its nature, unless its development is interrupted (either by external accident, or, in the case of a nature which contains a constitutive contradiction, by the way in which that contradiction develops). The telos is the final form attained in an entity’s process of development.”
And he defines teleology (in Marx/Hegel/Aristotle’s sense) this way:
“a theory about how the real nature (essence) of a whole entity is to identified; how its development from immature, to mature, and declining forms is to be explained; and how its characteristic behavior is to be explained in a law-like fashion. A whole entity can be anything from an amoeba to a form of human society, to an astronomical system.” Meikle explains that as a philosopher deeply steeped in Hegel and Aristotle Marx was working within a theoretical matrix that understood terms like telos in the ways defined above
Marx is a teleological thinker and he was studying human social historical development in general and capitalism in particular – he was looking to understand the systems nature and the laws governing its coming into being, its maturity and passing away.
First, what is social human development? It is the development of the productive power of our labor. That means, for instance, that at one stage of development I can make a pair of shoes in a day and at another stage of development I can make two hundred pairs of shoes in a day. There is an immense period of social development that separates these two stages. Different social relationships are possible when labor is capable of producing 200 hundred pairs of shoes in a day then when it is producing one pair. This is what is meant by the “productive forces.”
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The development of labor’s productive powers happens within the confines of class society and enriches the exploiting class who can appropriate the social surplus. But within those exploitative social relations the productive powers of labor continue to develop.
Capitalism is the most intense spur to the development of labors productive power and it is in this sense historically necessary, it is necessary to develop the productive powers of labor that ultimately will minimize the working day and allow for the liberation of humans from necessity—that is we will be in the “real of freedom” – or communism.
Barring a cosmological catastrophe socialism is a necessary and inevitable development because capital is forced by its own laws to constantly develop the productive power of labor (or the productive forces) but what Marx shows is that: “The rising productivity of labor manifests itself in a falling profitability of capital.” In other words the development of the productive forces that capitalism not only makes possible but actually requires for its survival at the same time undermine its foundations. Some people seemed worried that historical inevitability means that it doesn’t matter what humans do. That is wrong, what the science shows us is not that we don’t have to act, but what we should do and what humans will be compelled to do.
So yes capitalism will develop into socialism if it continues to develop. Because, that development undermines its foundations (rising labor productivity—a necessity for capitalisms continued development—results in a falling rate of profit. A profound contradiction at the heart of capitalism) But real human beings are a part of that development and in the process will become conscious of that development.
Mike E said
Well we agree on the importance of the explorations. but you conceive it as an exploration of “revolutionary doctrines and reality.”
I don’t look at theory as “doctrine.” That is not to say that we don’t need verdicts, methods, elaborated theories, logical constructs, philosophy, political economy and so on.
You write: “we need to be very clear about what Marxism is and is not” — as if our theory is fixed, closed, and as if we can therefore (simply) be “very clear” about what it is. And proceed from there. I think we shold conceive our theory as malleable and under interrogation — not seek to fix it as some “doctrine” (and then discard that inevitably unsatisfying construct).
You can try to pin down a Marxist doctrine, but your assumptions will make it rather hard to for us to intersect (on that discussion) — because I think we should precisely open up a bit about what Marxism is, and make its component parts justify themselves, and think through what its unifying whole is.
Any theory that presents itself as “doctrine” in that sense, would (i believe) be rather useless by its nature, especially at this moment. I think we need a far more dynamic sense of our own theory, and a far more creative approach to our own thinking and verdicts.
nando said
Keith writes:
We can agree this is teleology. And it is a set of assumptions that should be removed from analysis. It absolutizes the contradictions supposedly inherent within a thing, and treates the impact of its context as something absolutely external.
I don’t think that capitalism has any “form, state or condition” to which it develops “by its nature,” unless “its development is interrupted.” On the contrary, capitalism needs to be interrupted (by socialism), and it (by its nature) only develops the potential for that change (but also includes the potential for other outcomes).
A barley corn is assumed to have a characteristic form of negation (i.e. sprouting to produce new barley), while grinding it up for bread is an “external accident.”
These discinctions are not justified.
Chuck Morse said
Mike, I think it’s good that you want to “open up” Marxism. People have been doing that for a century. But, as some point, you’re not going to be a Marxist anymore.
Nando, you’re mixing up two very different levels of abstraction: the discussion of the concept of an organic being versus the discussion of agriculture. Yes, they’re connected, but they’re not the same thing conceptually.
redflags said
I think it can be argued that something called socialism is “inherent” in capitalist development. But the character of that “socialism” is NOT inherently communist.
There are different socialisms. I think this is the point Marx was making in the Communist Manifesto when he lists a number of types of then-existing socialism, in order to distinguish communists from that pack.
Keith said
Nando,
it is great that we can agree on the definition of teleology. One more question though.
Was Marx a teleological thinker? And if he was then it what sense can you claim to be a Marxist when you suggest that we abandon teleology?
Or, do you want to argue that Marx was not a teleological thinker?
Tell No Lies said
The acorn/oak thing intrigues me. I think its much more complicated than Keith suggests, but that it is still a powerful metaphor. Why is it the “nature” of an acorn to become an oak and not, say, a meal for a squirrel? Certainly from the point of view of the squirrel oak trees exist to produce squirrel food and far more acorns are eaten by squirrels than grow into oaks. For the most part we (humans) don’t eat acorns and so we think the purpose of acorns is to grow into oak trees that we can admire, climb, hang swings on, and chop down for lumber. If the whole thing were being viewed from another planet, of course, it would be apparent that there is an oak/acorn system of constant becoming that itself emerged over millenia of evolution. Acorns can become oaks but not tulips because of a long process of plant speciation under various selective environmental pressure. The “nature” of the oak/acorn system is the product of a process of historical emergence. On top of all this is the fact that squirrels (in keeping with their “nature”) bury acorns and forget where they buried them, resulting the unintentional but no less neccesary sprouting of new oaks. And the acorns theuy eat are turned into squirrel shit which along with all the other rotting and digested organic matter lying around nourishes those buried sprouting acorns, suggesting to our Martian astro-biologist an oak/acorn/squirrel system. Intentionality is involved in all this. Certainly squirrels have a sort of intentionality. Indeed I think it makes sense to see the capacity for intentionality as an emergent feature of system in which there was once almost none.
Under capitalism most of us are like squirrels eating and burying acorns with some idea of our personal motivations but with little understanding of how the whole system works and how certain social facts emerge unintentionally out of tendential features of our aggregate individually intentional actions. If squirrels were to grasp the workings of the whole system and then set out to reorganize it to better meet their needs by say, systematically and collectively gathering all the acorns, planting the right fraction to meet their anticipated future needs and storing the rest someplace where they wouldn’t be forgotten, they would be human or becoming human. And that, in a sense, is what we are, squirrels striving to be more human, trying to understand the complex system of which we are a part in order to transform it and doing so at first in fits and starts.
Marxism was the first serious comprehensive account of the social system we live in elaborated with an eye towards its conscious and collective transcendence. Marx’s own writings are contradictory. At times he speaks as if there were an underlying purpose to things, at others not so much. There are hard and soft teleologies. It is culturally difficult to talk about tendential features of systems without slipping into ascribing purposefulness to them where it doesn’t exist. That doesn’t obviate the explanatory power of talking about tendential features.
Mike is right that most of human pre-history, as far as we know, involved very little change in how we lived. I don’t know if the neolithic revolution was simply fortuitous or a qualiative leap conditioned by an accumulation of lesser advances that created conditions for it. This goes back to a question Mike raised in another context, namely when language arose, which we don’t really know. What seems clear to me, however, is that the fact of our capacity as a species to represent and share our experiences and reflection symbolically with each other makes possible the accumulation not simply of material surpluses, but more importantly of surplus knowledge and therefore possibilties and choices. Ideas matter. What we think we are doing matters, not because it is the same as what we are actually doing, but because it is our attempt to reflect on and gain conscious mastery of the processes of which we are a part.
I’m sure Chuck will accuse me of further agnosticism for this, but i’d like to know what exactly I’m being agnostic about that I shouldn’t be.
nando said
Keith writes:
I think that we are all product of our times, and we bear the markings of what we emerge out of (even as we sometimes break with it.)
I have been making a new pass through the writings of Althusser — where you can find (in both “For Marx” and “Reading Capital”) detailed exploration of teleological streams within Marx, and methodological leaps in Marx that point away from teleology.
In other words, here (as elsewhere), I don’t feel compelled to adopt a binary, either/or, this-or-that framework. Mainly I think (like Althusser) that Marx represented a pretty historic break in methodology and analysis, but that there remains in his thought and in his modes of expression (which are not the same thing!) strains of thinking that reflect deep seated assumptions of his times (about progress, necessity, etc.)
And like Althusser, I think that Marx is not just Marx… there are places and stages, he makes different arguments and assumptions in different places.
Zerohour pointed to the important very-late Marx work on roads to revolution in Russia (see Late Marx and the Russian Road by Teodor Shanin) — and also work on Marx’s “ethnographic notebooks” (discussed in works by News and Letters) for a sense of Marx’s development (i.e. not just between the “early humanist Marx” and the “later materialist Marx” — but also within the “late marx” on questions of determinism and contingency).
Chuck writes:
Heh. Not only am I mixing them up, I’m utterly oblivious to them. What is this “concept of organic being” — and where does it reside? Does a barley corn have an “essential nature” — which is fullfilled by sprouting and thwarted by beer making? I don’t believe it, conceptually.
But i’m listening…. so school me.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, unless I misunderstood your comment, I believe that the question is simpler than you concede: in the terms of dialectical philosophy, everything has a nature, whether we are speaking of an acorn, a human, or a social system.
It is the nature of the acorn to grow into an oak tree; a human to grow from an infant to an adult; a social system to be emerge, contradict itself, and die …..
A squirrel may eat an acorn, or an infant may die a car crash, but the nature of the acorn and infant remain the same. To ask about an ecosystem, or a traffic system, is to ask a different question.
With respect to capitalism, there is no doubt in my mind that Marx believed that capitalism had a specific nature and that its mission was to fulfill it.
Mike E said
I don’t believe everything has a nature in the sense you are talking about. Everything is made up of contradictions, some contradictions are more determining and defining of the dynamics of a process, and that is the dialectics of it. (Mao remarked that it’s not just the case that socialism has contradictions, but that it is riddled by contradictions, rife with contradictions.)
But the idea that there is a single, defining nature inherent to each thing and each process is religious.
An infant dies in a car crash, and that is a “deviation” from its nature and purpose? That is just religious (to me).
Things in the universe do not have inherent purpose or meaning. Meaning and purpose are only given by consciousness, and so only exist where conscious beings (mainly us) are present. (Though squirrels may, i suppose, be conscious enough to convey purpose to their actions.)
Mao speaks of essence, but by that he means the defining contradiction determining the development of the process overall (not something mystical that conveys a transcendental purpose.) Communists have sometimes spoken of the historic mission of the working class. I think they have meant different things like that, but we should not speak about that in some teleological sense.
* * * * * * *
Back to chuck’s example: I may have expectations for my child, they may have expectations for themselves, a human society may have expectations for children in general — but beyond that, our lives (whether as adults or children) have no inherent meaning, or essence or purpose.
And you don’t have to go far to bump into the religiousity of that. does your life have an essense? A purpose? does the sun have an essence? the atmosphere? What is it?
Did the moment when that guy bumped into me yesterday have an essence? (there were dynamics to the moment, contradictions, but no essence.)
It is not in the nature of an acorn to grow into an oak tree. An acorn just is. It is an outgrowth of an oak branch, which has a genetic propensity to grow such acorns. And it has that propensity because those traits were selected over eons of natural selection. It emerged from a process that just is. It has contradictions, but no essence.
And certainly there are many more acorns that rot than germinate. Who (what god?) decreed that their purpose was procreation, not rotting into fertilizer? And isn’t it odd that most have a fate as fertilizer, but an essence as germinator? how does that work. And if both of those ends (fertilizer or germinator) has an impact on the surroundings — how do you know which one is the “essence”?
Now if you inject consciousness into it, the paradoxes deepen: And, for example, if I plant barley with the intention of making beer — is the “essence” of each grain somehow still to make new barley, even when its actual intended purpose is to make beer? (In that case the purpose is real, and determined by me. And the essense is fictious and bestowed by no one.)
While we are thinking about it, take the example of sperm. Is the essense of sperm to fertilize eggs (even if only one in a million do?)
Don’t you come close to saying it is a violation of sperm’s purpose to “spill it” without chance of fertilization? don’t we find ourselves flirt with the deist theories of the Catholic Mother Church?
Chuck writes;
Capitalism does have a specific nature (a set of dynamics, a particular set of contradictions, a history, etc). And marx laid that bare at great depth. And the development of its contradictions can be said to create conditions and pressures for specific changes (and leaps) — including towards its own negation. (which Marx also analyzed at great depth.)
but beyond that who assigned a social system a mission? A soldier gets her mission from her comrades. What god of history assigns “missions” to social systems?
land said
Why does Mike say “things in the universe do not have inherent purpose or meaning. Meaning and purpose are only given by consciousness and so only exist where conscious beings (mainly us) are present.
Is that right?
There are things that do have meaning even if we are not present.
Whether you define it as a meaning purpose or essence it exists for some reason. It does not need a mission.
Why does it have to be religious?
This argument is confusing. Interesting but confusing.
Keith said
Mike I really think you should check out some of the critics of Althusser and go back and read some of Marx’s stuff. I will dig up some things later nd send them along, I have to do some other work now. But here is something Marx wrote about Gustav Hugo (I don’t know who he is but Marx criticizes him this way): “he is a skeptic as regards the necessary essence of things, so as to be a courtier as regards their accidental appearance.”
Mike you are taking the view of Hugo here, and that is your right, but it seems to me that you are doing it flippantly without a lot of thought. When you say searching for a things nature is religious I think you are missing something… it is what Marx meant by science.
more later
Chuck is basically right about this….
Chuck Morse said
Mike, without commenting on the merits or demerits of your views, I think that they are fundamentally inconsistent with Marx, who, in my reading, was a teleological thinker and did believe that things have “natures.”
poetwarrior said
“Meaning and purpose are only given by consciousness and so only exist where conscious beings (mainly us) are present.” Interestingly, this was the philosophy of Bishop George Berkeley, who argued that objects only exist if there is an observer, and since no one is in a position to observe the universe, the good Bishop (for whom UC Berkeley is named; he must be spinning in his grave)decided this was proof of God’s existence. In other words, this is the philosophy of idealism—a label Bishop George wore proudly—not materialism.
mike e said
Keith writes:
Yes. It would be wrong (as Hugo apparently did) to question the “necessary essence of things” IN ORDER TO privilege their “accidental appearance.” And if Gustav Hugo (like other empiricists) said there is nothing to things but appearance, we too should criticize his philosophy.
And I am far from denying that there are defining dynamics to things that lie below (and distinct from) their appearance. I am opposing a particular definition of essence that is teleological (that assumes that some end goal is inherent in the thing, even if it never gets there.)
We are not stuck with only two choices — i.e. either a theory of essential nature that views each thing as having a characteristic way of negation, or a theory of mere appearance.
We can (and should) uphold a theory of understanding the contradictions running through and defining things — that lie below (and give rise to) appearance.
We can, like Mao, see appearance (and therefore perception) as being the doorway (or threshhold) to deeper understandings of the dynamics that define and develop a process. And we could even choose (as a terminology) to define the principal contradiction of thing as its “essence.”
But all of that is materialist — and still far away from the teleological idea that things have inherent missions, or that each thing has (by its “nature”) a characteristic way of negation, and so on.
If the proletariat has a mission it is because class conscious proletarians and political representatives of that class have (consciously) adopted such a mission. It is not as if some higher spirit of History sits on Olympus and hands out purpose, making it inherent in the “nature” of this class.
Poetwarrior quotes me saying:
And then poetwarrior writes:
Poetwarrior: you misunderstand what I wrote.
I do not argue (like the idealists) that objects only exist where there is an observor. Objects exist independent of the mind, and preceded the mind. (There was a universe long before it gave rise to our form of “matter that thinks.”)
We are debating the origin of meaning, not existence.
A stone exists (independent of us). But does it have an inherent meaning? A purpose? A mission? What would that “meaning” be? Does it have some characteristic form of negation (apart from the ways it will actually be negated eventually)? No.
And those who think that the stone is there (sitting on the ground, waiting) for some inherent reason have crossed over to objective idealism — since clearly the “reason for the stone” is (sooner or later) the plan of God (who works in mysterious ways.)
And here we are making a distinction between reason and cause.
Everything has causes. But most things in the universe don’t have a reason (which can only be assigned by consciousness).
When humans build a road, their conscious plan means that there are reasons it follows its route, there are reasons why it crosses the river at point X or Y. There is a purpose to those decisions (in the minds of engineers).
But when droplets of water form a rainbow (without human intervention) there are objective causes that gave rise to the rainbow, but not some larger purpose. There is no God creating the rainbow to cheer us up.
So when Christians say “everything happens for a reason” — they are positing that there is a plan for the universe and everything takes its place in that plan. And the idealism (religiousity) is obvious (because it is explicit).
When conspiracy theorists say what is the reason for unemployment, they are not asking about causes. They think someone decided to create unemployment for nefarious purposes. Conspiracy theories are exactly a form that people cross from materialism to idealism. Many things in society happen for causes (wars, depressions, technological revolutions, collapses of governments) — but they are rarely the result of a small single orchestrating cabal who bring the phenomenon into existence to serve a particular purpose. (War for example are caused by many players pursuing different purposes.)
* * * * * *
On Althusser, I agree with Keith that we should study critics of Althusser as well as Althusser himself. And we should (ourselves) develop a critique of Althusser (whose work “divides into two”). In quoting him (if you notice) I was merely pointing out that he had done a lot of investigatory work into Marx’s body of work — teasing out through “readings” the methods and theory underlying Marx’s explorations (and uncovering seams and contradicitons within Marx’s analysis, and within his methods of articulation.)
At the moment, I’ve been exploring E.P. Thompson’s famous (and searing) denunciation of Althusser. And Paul Hirst’s answer to Thompson.
Adrienne said
Interesting discussion.
Mike wrote:
Yes, everything on this planet came about through the process of Natural Selection. We also know that “Chance” or “Design” are not logical deductions, and nothing we see (including ourselves) occurred by leaps and bounds.
So, any complex thing, such as Oak Trees and Squirrels have been formed by numerous, cumulative, slight modifications which occurred successively over a long period of time — and in direct relation to each other.
Thus, by the time we get to a question like “purpose”, one cannot separate the Oak Trees from the Squirrels. Since they evolved together and mutually benefited from each other, naturally they now also depend on the other for their continued existence. Isn’t being able to propagate to ensure continual existence their purpose?
As for “meaning” and “essence”… there can be no answer for that.
They are philosophical questions that human beings ask — as a result of having brains that have been formed through Natural Selection! But leaving aside such philosophical questions, clearly everything seems to be connected and bound up with everything else on this planet. So for instance, oak trees produce oxygen that creatures need, and squirrels (one such creature in need of oxygen) not only gets to eat a certain amount of the acorns, but also ensures that there will more trees propagated for a steady supply of future oxegen — so that the process of natural selection can continue.
It’s a circular system.
And this reminds me of the poem by Scottish poet Kathleen Raine:
Keith said
nice poem…
Mike, just because something has an essence, or nature doesn’t mean it is a god given nature, nor does it rule out contradiction. Change is at the heart of dialectical thought (Althusser, in my opinion is pretty much an anti-dialectical thinker… anti-essentialism is anti-dialectics… his idea of “over-determination” is a way of jettisoning dialectics but that is another subject)
But there are two kinds of changes: accidents (or contingency), and necessity. The point of dialectics is to abstract away the accidents so that the essences can be understood (that is what Marx is doing in Capital).
Scott Meikle (I know he is not well known but his book is really excellent) gives the example of a kitten.
If a kitten gets run over it has met with an accident. That is accidental change. If a kitten grows to maturity becoming a mature cat, that is another kind of change, necessary change. The potential for a kitten to become a cat is in the kitten itself; it is part of its nature, it is its telos, or essence. I agree that it is awkward to say that a mature cat is the kitten’s “goal” because of the connotations of the word “goal.” But that doesn’t change anything. All kinds of accidents can happen to the kitten which will prevent it from realizing its potential. But the kitten will never grow into a bird or aardvark. If you conflate accidental change and necessary change then the possibility of science is gone.
Mike gave the example of a child. Whatever a child’s parent may imagine is the child’s purpose in life has nothing to do with the nature, or essence, or telos of the child. Human beings go though a process of infancy (a relatively long period of helplessness relative to other mammals), adolescence, young adulthood, etc etc. now some of these classifications may be culturally and socially constituted in which case they are not a part of a human’s essence (and a scientific study of human nature would concern itself with questions like: is adolescence a social construction or a part of human nature). But humans do go through stages of maturation like puberty. That is the telos of a human that is how they will develop unless an accident happens. Here is an accident: The child is born into a family of Christian nuts who home-school the child and then drown her in a bathtub. But the child drowned in a tub is an accident – it is not in the child’s nature to be murdered by her crazed parents. And it doesn’t matter if other Christina nuts come out and say it was gods will or gods plan or there was a reason or if they say she is a better place now. What Christina nuts say has no effect on scientific categories.
If you look at the afterword to the second German edition of Capital, Marx endorses a reviewers description of his project which includes these statements:
“The one thing that is of importance to Marx is to find the law of the phenomena.. of still greater importance is to find the law of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another … Marx treats the social movement as a process of natural history governed by laws….”
Then Marx says of the review with characteristic modesty, “here the reviewer pictures what he takes to be my method, in a striking, and as far as concerns my own application of it, generous way. But what else is he describing but the dialectical method?”
“The law governing a phenomena’s development” is another way of saying its “telos.”
If you throw away teleology then you throw away Marx and science.
===========================
Adriene’s point that these natural and social processes are connected is well taken. The point of an analysis is then to find ways to isolate the interrelated process for study to find their natures, their essences, the laws governing their development, so that the complex interactions of the social and natural world can be understood. They are best understood if we know what is necessary and what is accidental.
poetwarrior said
“Everything has causes. But most things in the universe don’t have a reason (which can only be assigned by consciousness).”
Well, actually no. The universe has no cause (The Big Bang is a consequence, not a cause). Quantum physics explains that if you travel far back enough in time toward the origin of the universe, time itself dissolves, and with it causation. (This is known as the PlanK Point.)
On a related note, something can exist without being classified as an object. As Heisenberg once said, “sub-atomic particles are not things; they are relationships. ” A point, nicely to note, that even Einstein could, or would, not grasp.
Mike E said
Keith, you absolutize things in an undialectical way. If a kitten gets run over, there is accident involved. But there is also a lot of accident involved in the process of a kitten staying alive and becoming a cat. And there is accident involved in whether the cat becomes pregnant and gives birth. It is not like the maturing of the kitten is a process that is devoid of accident, and only the early death is a result of accident. And the early death of a kitten is no more or less “in its nature” than a long life.
* * * * * *
There are within things and processes contradictions that define them. A barley corn can’t produce a tulip (as has been pointed out). And those contradictions shape possibilities and trends. There are even patterns and tendencies marked enough in the development of things that we can choose to call some of them “laws.”
Laws (in that scientific sense) are patterns and tendencies within the complex of contradictions that make up a process. They have nothing to do with the telos of an object (they do not imply an inherent outcome or a characteristic form of negation). They are trends and patterns inherent in the thing, and they exist only as tendencies (in dynamic relations both to other internal tendencies and to external events).
But none of them imply or represent a “typical” or “characteristic” way of negation (or a typical outcome). They are tendencies within the thing — that may either play out or not. The tendencies are inherent, but the playing out is not.
(And there is something odd, to me, in pointing to outcomes that are exceedingly rare, and announcing they somehow especially typical or essential. Most seeds (including most barley corns) don’t sprout. So on that basis alone it seems very questionable to announce that sprouting as a new plant is somehow inherently the essence, the purpose or the characteristic form of negation for a barley corn. Says who? On what basis? It certainly isn’t typical. Same with sperm: millions die off without fertilizing anything, and only one or two fertilize. What makes the fertilization typical, essential or characteristic, but leaves the dying atypical, nonessential or uncharacteristic?
Plants produce oxygen, and that functions (objectively) in many complex chemical cycles in the biosphere, but that isn’t “the purpose” of plants, or the purpose of oxygen. Anyone who has argued with fundamentalists knows that the complex interactions of living things is, for them, precisely an argument for saying everything has a “purpose” — and such purpose could only be conscious. In fact the evolution of a species of evergreen did not happen to serve some “purpose” — it just happened (the only way it could happen: through natural selection operating within the context of existing species and existing interrelationships of the changing biosphere and specific ecosystems).
And it is metaphysical to consider external events (contexts, intersection of external contradictions) to be merely accidental, while assuming that the unfolding of internal contradictions is somehow qualitatively less accidental. There is accident in the development and outcome of internal contradictions as well. And what is external in one context is internal in another — so nothing is inherently and solely external.
One of the common features of dogmatic thinking is the overestimation of necessity and the underestimation of accident. In fact, there is far less “typical motion” in events (in revolutions, in parallel development of societies, in political movements) than has often been assumed (on the basis of inflated assumptions about the role of necessity.
There is a tendency for mountains to erode and therefore decline. But if the mountain range is hit by a meteor, or if tectonic plates collide in certain ways, or massive volcanic eruptions, then those tendencies interact with other tendencies and other events. It is not like erosion was the natural form of resolution got “interrupted” by something that was less essential, or less natural, or less a part of the process. These are all natural forms of resolution, existing as contending and intersecting tendencies.
There is a tendency within capitalism to produce its grave diggers — the proletariat emerges with the potential to create a new form of society, and to resolve the contradicitons of capitalism in ways that give rise to socialism (and potentially communism). But there is a potential here that is inherent in capitalism (i believe) but the resolution itself is not inherent. It is a tendency and a possibility (and we will see if it is a strong tendency, or a tendency easily overriden by other perhaps unforseen factors). And these factors are not merely external ones. There are, in fact, other countervailing or contending tendencies also arising from the contradictions of capitalism.
The fundamental contradiction of capitalism (between socialized production and private appropriation) has two forms of manifestation: it manifests itself in the anarchy of capital (and in competition, crisis and wars), and it manifests itself in class struggle (the contradiction between proletarian and bourgeois over the direction of society).
It has turned out that conflicts arising from the anarchy of capital have developed the potential to end the whole process (i.e. nuclear war, for example, could destroy enough of society, its forces of production, and human populations, that a transition to communism becomes more difficult and society is “thrown back” — or even in some scenarios, humanity is destroyed by nuclear winter etc).
In that case one set of tendencies arising from the nature of capitalism proved more powerful than others.
And it is not given which ones will win out. Certainly it is not inherent in capitalism which of its contradictions win out. And we (in fact) have something to say about which wins out. (What we do, as subjective players, influences the interaction of those contradictions, perhaps decisively, perhaps not).
It is not like one of those contradictions (the class struggle) is inherently the natural path of unfolding of contradictions, and the other one (world war, or other destruction) is inherently “an accident.”
And it is not like the only contradictions that could emerge are inherently external (i.e. a meteor strike).
Most class societies in human history did not take leaps to higher levels. Most “rose and fell” — Mayan, Indus valley, and many more. There was no inherent pull toward “progress” — compelling an early slave society to become feudal. In the Americas, there were objective limits on the forces of production: the “neolithic revolution” could not unfold in the Americas the same way because there were not as many large domesticatable animals (horses, goats, cows, yaks, water buffalos etc.) but only dogs and llamas. The Native peoples developed a major new productive force by creating corn (the most productive grain in the world) through genetic manipulation — and so they were able to produce cities (even without the productive capacity of cattle and horses). Where their development in isolation would have gone is unknown, because isolation ended (and something external intervened — the European invasion and its devastating plagues of disease which decimated the main productive forces, human beings).
But the resolution of slave society into feudal society is one possible outcome of the contradictions of slave society — but it is not a necessary one, and it is not any more characteristic of slave society than other outcomes. It is (in fact) the less common outcome. These are merely tendencies, and they take place in the midst of other tendencies and events and constraints (like, for example, the completely accidental distribution of domesticatable mammals on the planet).
We can identify and study these trend lines (which lie below the appearance of things). We can study their devleopment and interaction. We can develop sciencific knowledge about all of this. And none of it requires the assertion of “characteristic forms of negation” or the assumption that one set of tendencies is inherently more characteristic than another.
Unknown said
Along the Adrienne’s saying, on loving the oppressed and needy,
The Rose Lyrics – Bette Midler song
Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger
An endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower
And you, its only seed
It’s the heart, afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance
It’s the dream, afraid of waking
That never takes the chance
It’s the one who won’t be taken
Who cannot seem to give
And the soul, afraid of dying
That never learns to live
When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long
And you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed
That with the sun’s love, in the spring
Becomes the rose
Now it is in your hands, the readers, to light the fire to bring lights over darkenned world of ownership.
Adrienne said
Mike wrote:
To me it seems the question isn’t who “says who” and “on what basis”, it’s Natural Selection that says what — under select conditions.
Obviously within the process of natural selection dying isn’t atypical or nonessential or uncharacteristic at all. Indeed, there is a whole lot of dying that goes on in order for a few strong seeds (be they barley corn, acorn, squirrel, or human) to be able to grow. However, those strong seeds, under select conditions being able to grow does seem to be rather typical, no?
This seems like you’re getting back to “meaning” rather than “purpose.” If you look at this planet as a continually functioning system though, there has to be a purpose for a plant (or anything) for it to continue to exist — otherwise the process of natural selection will end up discarding it and it won’t exist for very long.
Fundamentalists don’t use logic, all they do is negate and dismiss logic in favor of their favorite specious “god” arguments based entirely on “design.” That everything was created through magical leaps and bounds by the pointing finger of their omnipotent imaginary friend.
I think that those continually functioning (and sometimes dynamically changing) interrelationships that go on within our planet’s ecosystem are in fact, their purpose.
Mike E said
Key to darwin’s theory was the insight that life produced far more individuals than can survive. Darwin was reading Malthus on this question when the idea of natural selection occurred to him, because he realized that there would emerge a differential — some individuals with specific traits would tend to die more often, and others tend to survive more often.
And so, again, it is not “essential” to a plant or animal that it reproduce — it either does or doesn’t — with ramifications in aggregate.
The fact that reproduction is not typical or universal is one of the defining characteristics of life on earth — because it shaped the very process by which life differentiated.
* * * * * *
At the risk of nit-picking, I would assume a distinction (by definition) between purpose and objective function.
We have had our examples of kittens, mountains, acorns and barley corn. let me give some others:
Rainforests create oxygen, they are a carbon sink. They take carbon dioxide from the air and put oxygen into the atmosphere. They do this. That is not why they are there. They just are. They did not evolve in order to provide oxygen to oxygen-breathing lifeforms. But they do. And as a result, the earth is more hospitable to oxygen-breathing lifeforms (and more deadly to anerobic lifeforms.) But, again, that is not why the rainforest ecosystems evolved. It is a byproduct of an objective process that recognizes no purpose.
Evolution is not (as the creationists claim) a theory of “random” development. It is actually lawful — it happens along certain patterns. (And Darwin’s theory of natural selection started to give us a sense of those patterns and tendencies.)
* * * * * *
The earth started without an oxygen atmosphere. And this oxygen was actually released into the air by plants (largely algae) creating a tremendous change in climate and conditions. Some species were unable to survive in the new atmopshere, others thrived. And the new conditions (naturally) favored the development of new and diverse forms of life that could operate in oxygen.
But you can’t say that those algae and subsequent oxygen producing plants had a purpose of serving a stable system of oxygen breathing creatures.
If they had not developed that way, there would have been other creatures and some other system.
It is not that plants evolve to fill a function in a system, but that interconnections emerge between the lifeforms that exist (some of those interconnections are supportative, others are lethal, some species continue, almost all go extinct after some tens of millions of years as the conditions of their emergence change and as new conditions favor other life forms more).
In other words, there is no stable system — but an unstable one. And species don’t perform some “function” in order to exist, they exist and interact with what is (either surviving and thriving or not, and usually in the process affecting whether other species survive or not.)
Carl Davidson said
So far, I’m with MikeE.
Keith’s use of the Acorn-Oak Tree metaphor is problematic, in that it uses the nature of development in the organic world, to apply to the social and intellectual worlds, which rest on the organic, but operate with a different ‘logic’. One wild card: There is not just ‘Capitalism’ emerging, but capitalisms and other dysfunctional dead ends..
This gets rather deep very quickly. I’m of the view that Robert Pirsig solves many of these riddles with his ‘Metaphyics of Quality.’ Here’s a quote:
But as Pirsig solves a number of these problems, be prepared to have some orthodox notions of DiaMat undermined as well!
Adrienne said
Mike:
Since you’re drawing this distinction, I have to admit that I was using the word purpose in my comments to apply to a continual process of functionality among various species (both plant and animal). Even though they aren’t exactly the same thing, there is a similarity between the two. But now that you’ve mentioned it, the word purpose does seem to impart some sort of end goal or ultimate perfection to the natural selection process, and I completely reject that idea. I don’t believe that evolution actually has such firm end goals, nor does the process always move toward a state of perfection. Instead, I see natural selection as a process that is always in movement, and though blind, is always ready to adapt in order to keep that movement going in whatever direction it can — or stop functioning and die, as the case may be.
Agree, yet it seems obvious that plants that have evolved in such a way that they are well interconnected with other species, and do fulfill a necessary function (such as the example of oaks with their tasty acorns drawing hungry, industrious squirrels who horde them) have a far better chance of long term survival.
Absolutely agree. A Totally Unstable System — that is always extremely busy! :^)
Mike E said
I was just thinking about the opening words of the Communist Manifesto:
It is an example of how (from the beginning) communists have understood the possibility of various outcomes to the class struggle. There are tendencies inherent in class society that (at various points) favor the “revolutionary reconstitution of society at large. But there are also dynamics that can potentially lead to the “common ruin of the contending classes.”
Carl Davidson said
Short version: Socialism or Barbarism
Keith said
I think our ability to understand the world dialectically are stakes of this discussion and I am not sure if that has been clear. A couple of things, I am not defending diamat, in other threads I laid out what I see as the degeneration of Marx’s thought in the second international. I think the worry about biological analogies is mistaken. Dialectical categories of thought (necessity, accident, form, content essence, and so on) are applicable for the apprehension of all historical process of coming to be and passing away of entities or systems. It doesn’t matter if those systems or entities are a part of natural history, the history of the universe, or of human societies.
I think that if any open minded person whose class interest are not so bound up with the current system as to prejudice them against its radical transformation makes a serious study of Marx’s mature works they will realize that human self understanding reached a high point with Marx that hasn’t been surpassed and won’t be surpassed without grasping what he actually achieved. Academic social science is quite literally the institutionalization of anti-Marxism which rarely speaks its adversaries name. When we abandon the category of necessary change and accidental change we abandon the heart of dialectics and we surrender to the intellectual enemies of Marxism. (Sorry to be so dramatic, I am especially sick of capitalism this morning).
One place to see the importance of dialectical categories in Marx’s thought is in Das Kapital. The first chapter considers how the commodity (a useful thing produced for the purpose of exchanging in a market for some different useful thing) goes through a series of necessary transformations (Marx also considers accidental transformations) whereby the commodity form and commodity exchange necessarily give rise to the money-form. What Marx shows is that the exchange of commodities necessarily gives rise to a money commodity. One historical example would be the emergence of barter in upstate New York during an economic collapse in the late 1970’s. The people of a small town began petty commodity production (spontaneously) and established barter type trade. Before long, just as Marx shows will necessarily happen, one commodity emerged as the “universal equivalent.” Often a precious metal takes the position of universal equivalent, but in this case it was cords of wood that nearly everyone used for home heating. In other words everyone would take wood in exchange for anything they produced. (one problem with barter is that you can only trade with someone who has something you also want, money solves this problem—it is universally tradeable and the solution to the problem is within the commodity form itself, it is a part of its nature and its necessary unfolding. Wherever barter emerges money will soon follow. In the case of cord wood money, the people of the town eventually solicited a bank to store the wood and issue paper representations of the wood. At this point the federal government intervened and declared it to be illegal on the grounds that only the federal government can issue money.
If you don’t understand which pats of the story are necessary changes and which are accidental then you can’t understand history and certainly you can’t understand the world to change the world. In this case the intervention of the federal government is an accidental change blocked the unfolding the commodity form into money (and if it continued it would have undergone additional transformations, most notably into capital—the social relations whereby surplus labor is extracted from the direct producers).
In Das Kapital, Marx traces the necessary transformations of the commodity into money, into capital. He is studying the necessary coming into being of capital, its development and growth and its necessary passing away. That is Das Kapital is not a book about the history of capitalism (although Marx uses historical examples, as I tried to do in the above) it is a book about capital’s necessary development. How that plays out in history where accidents, and contingency also play as role as counteracting forces on necessary developments is a different and unpredictable issue the point of it all is to be able to sort necessity for accident.
History is not pre-ordained, “the class struggle can result in the mutual destruction of contending classes” as Marx and Engels put it in the Manifesto, or in other words “socialism or barbarism,” but that has nothing to do with the tasks of communists. Since Mike invoked the Manifesto her is another bit:
“The Communists…have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.”
Where would such profound knowledge come from? It comes from our grasp of dialectics, our ability to determine the difference between necessity and accident.
Mike E said
I think the slgoan “socialism or barbarism” comes soaked in the chauvinist assumptions that Europeans made about “barbarism” — and in practical political reality is rather different than marx’s more precise “common ruin.” Barbarism reproduced a dividing line between “civilization” and “barbarism” that has animated reactionary European justifications (and self-images) for a thousand years.
poetwarrior said
I appreciate the analogies to biology and astronomy in relationship to explaining the Marxist interpretation of history, but I’d rather approach this topic from the lessons of political experience. Some of us remember working alongside, if not actually with, the Iranian students in the U.S. allied with the People’s Mujahideen (PM)back in the late 1970s. Their understanding of the unfolding revolution against the Shah went something like this:”Iran is already capitalist. Khomeini and the Mullahs represent a traditionalist reaction against the Shah’s repressive modernization. But, Iran can’t go backwards, historically speaking, so while Khomeini may have the support of the people now, he can’t ride the tide of history, which is rolling toward socialism. We can make a temporary alliance with Khomeini, because he won’t last long in power. Apres Khomeini, nous.” This shallow application of historical materialism failed to take into account the fact that the Shah’s capitalist reforms had left much of the superstructure of Iran intact, especially in the realm of religion, and deliberately so, since the Shah was hoping, and enjoyed some sucess, in coopting the Mullahs, though not Khomeini’s circle. What followed everyone knows to well. The PM was all but exterminated in Iran, and then did a 180o turn, begging Western liberals to endorse their campaign to oust Khomeini, then moving what was left of their armed forces to Iraq, getting aid from Saddam Hussein. What’s left of the PM has jettisoned Marxism for a weird cult of personality around its leader and his wife, combined with admiration for the Washington Neocons, want regime change in Tehran just as they do. Such are the fruits of mistaking Marx for a historical prophet rather than a dialectical thinker.
Keith said
Poetwarrior, my knowledge of physics is superficial… I had forgotten to ask about the Heisenberg quote you related: “sub-atomic particles are not things; they are relationships.” That is a profoundly dialectical statement… –Marx makes the same point when speaking about commodities, money, capital, value etc. — was Heisenberg consciously using dialectical categories?
poetwarrior said
Perhaps subconsciously, Keith. Heisenberg was one of the few theoretical physicists of the XXth century to explore the philosophical consequences of his discoveries, in books such as PHILOSOPHY AND QUANTUM PHYSICS and PHILOSOPHY AND NUCLEAR SCIENCE. Most of his epigones argue that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle leads to post-modernism, not Marxism, because history has no laws any more than one can fix the position of a wave-particle. But, your comment does suggest some intriguing concurrences between Heisenberg and Marx, e.g., a commodity is not an object but a relationship.
chegitz guevara said
Chuck,
That’s equivalent to saying that those who understand quantum physics and relativity are no longer scientists, because they don’t agree with Newton anymore. Marx himself never treated his writings as infallible or fixed or universal. If we are to adopt his method, then we must use his method on his method. You, like so many vulgar Marxists, want to carve Marxism into stone tablets. And yet Marx himself discards portions of the Manifesto as being obsolete. He changes his mind on the possibility of skipping the stage of capitalism in order to make socialism (in particular, unique circumstances). “Criticize everything!” was his motto. You you say, in order to be Marxists, we can’t criticize anything. How much more unMarxist can you get?
Mike E said
we need a communist approach to communist theory.
Meaning a critical approach to a critical theory.
And it will require a “theoretical knife.”
I agree with chegitz here.
And i think in the 9 letters we talk about the encrustments and closing that happened to communist theory as a result of holding state power.
State power is mainly a good thing (overwhelmingly!) But a byproduct of the last two experiences was a codifying of the Marxism-of-the-day (and a Marxism-of-this-state), and an almost religious intolerance to ideological opponents and challenges.
We need to look at the theory we inherited and knock off the barnacles, the encrustments, and reconceive our theory as something in motion (not fixed or closed) — and reengage it with the thinking of our times (in a creative interaction that does not lose the specificity of our goals and movement).
In one sense, if we flash forward two or three centuries, what will people be saying?
I don’t think anyone will say “they had it right, they figured it all out for us.” They will say (if they are charitable and if we are lucky): “They were onto some things, and they started that process that helped bring our thoughts and our social relations forward toward this point.”
In other words there will be constant work for “the theoretical knife” — and every idea (we are currently infatuated with) will have to rejustify itself over and over (not simply be affirmed by loyalty, exclusion and force).
I want to organize public questioning even those ideas that I deeply believe are valid and enduring — because how can a new generation appreciate, adopt or develop such ideas EXCEPT if they are approached critically?
Green Red rev said
Thanks a lot for [critiquing a] one-sided vision on Barbarism, Mike.
Missionaries, under name of bringing civilization went out, studied underdeveloped nations, brought back reports and colonial powers took over.
What do we have now, except their exponential debts and labor and minerals already considered first worlder’s rightous property.
So who brings civilization?
I do not have access to a Pocketbook of Engels’ letters and writingson Philosophy. But, a part of it was interpreted by some to include a pro colonial essay re the domination of Algeria by France. That remains an open discussion.
Back on the main discussion, if earth treated as a disposable resource by capitalists and industry was as good as Marx had seen it then, sure, it would come at some point by trying all other ways. But check Internationlist Socialist Review to know that putting any hope on capitalism is futile and greens must join communists anyhow. That doesn’t automatically make humanity’s future bright and perfect either. But systematic change is needed.
Adrienne said
Keith wrote:
I totally agree. Maybe because I’m also one of those people whose brain tends to make a lot of important connections between and through differing categories of study. I’m aware though, that not everyone is going to agree with this tendency, and might often wonder if those of us who do this are somehow trying to confuse an issue, or even derail an entire discussion.
But someone like me will read what Mike wrote here:
And here:
And I’m thinking that this sounds like it has a lot in common with what I said when attempting to explain my view on how the process of natural selection works (in my last comment) — even though Mike is discussing what he sees as an evolving and ongoing process for communist theory moving into the future.
Mike also wrote:
Intelligently and well said. This is actually something I’ve thought about for a very long time — but it always seemed like an impossibility, until now. So, I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am that this site exists. Thanks, comrade(s)!
anon said
To be fair to Marx he was an individual, flawed but one non the less. Marxists are not individuals intellectually speaking. They still rely on him as a postulate. Its different then someone who took the path of Max Stirner or others like him before and after. The latter are much more handy men in their intellectual journey throwing things away that don’t really matter any more.
Chuck is right in the end, if you are no longer a productionist, if idealism vs materialism no longer matter to you, if you prefer small scale to large scale as the default set of social arrangements, if you no longer believe in the concept of the real movement(ie the teleology) YOU ARE NOT A MARXIST. There were some italian and french communist theorists in the late 60s and beyond who did this and more or less came to this conclusion. They might have remained addicted to the terminology(using capital in every other sentence)they might have called themselves communists instead of anarchists, had a certain reverence for the man, but they were no longer Marxists. Postulated ideologies(of which marxism is) only allow for so much deviation.
Mike E said
Anon writes:
Maoists talk dividing “one into two.” Nothing is monolithic, nothing is forever, nothing is pure.
But anon misunderstands: mechanical materialism and teleology have been elements of some forms of marxism. But they are not part of mine, and never have been.
Maoism (and not Maoism alone) thinks there is a unity of opposites between ideas and matter (in which matter is historically preceding, and overall determining in the dynamic.) Ideas give rise to material force, matter gives rise to ideas.
This is not a denial of materialism — it is in fact what materialism arrives at when it is dialectical.
So it is not a case of “idealism vs materialism no longer matter to you” — it is a case of understanding how material reality actually works.
There is no need to equate some narrow, rigid, one-way determinism (“productivism”?) with Marxism. The whole point of revolution is having ideas, political movements and the decisions of people have a profound impact on how production (and the rest of society) is organized and developed. Integral to that outlook is the understanding that how society is organized affects how we think, but that how we think and act can reorganize society. and it examines the dynamics and constrains of that.
So if mechanical materialism is Marxism, then we are not (and should not be) Marxists. But that is a strawman.
For example, on the question of large scale and small scale: Mao wrote a remarkable and icon-smashing proposal called “10 major relationships” where he rejected the then-dominant (soviet-style) assumption that communists were locked into large-scale projects, heavy industry, central decisions and so on. Mao said that (by contrast) all of these things should be seen as relationships (contradictions, unities of opposites) and not approached in a one-sided way.
That too is Marxist… and that is the kind of thinking we should uphold.