Dialectical materialism vs Marx's original concepts

What you said above with hegel kinda makes me think what would hegel say if he came on the scene post frege/russell etc - kinda like that question that pops in my mind like what would capital look like if it was written after the marginal revolution

Im not sure if im reading trotsky right, but is he being literal there?

I think so. He really seems to have thought that the "axiom" that "A = A" is something happening in time. See this: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/12/abc.htm

Could you elaborate on this, please, jura?

Is "A=A" considered an 'axiom'? If so, it is seen as something that 'happens outside of time'?

Is Trotsky making fundamental mistakes regarding 'formal logic'? If so, what are the contrasts between formal logic and Trotsky's argument?

Only a basic outline required, a few sentences, really, to give food for further thought.

I would wager a guess and say, not any different... marginalism was coming up during his lifetime and I would imagine the old Karl to be aware of that.

His value theory is not build on an a priori construction of the importance of 'labor' as a mystical factor of production that many contemporary economists accuse him of. It's rooted in an uncovering of the social relations between commodity producers, how value itself comes into being. But I guess that's nothing new to anyone here.

If you want a marginalist defense of Marxian value theory though, have fun with this (comes to the amazing conclusion that in a 'perfect market', commodities would indeed be exchanged at their values).

Well, yes, it's the so-called law of identity, and it doesn't "happen" (so time is out of the question) nor describe anything that "happens", because it pertains to ideal objects. Trotsky ignores this and wants to prove that the law does not hold, because the symbols printed on paper are not identical. He ignores (perhaps for purely didactic purposes, but still) the distinction between the symbol (name, sign), its meaning, and its reference. The equality "A = A" is about the identity of reference (denotation), not about symbols. Trotsky would have known this had he read Frege's "On Sense and Denotation" (1892). As I said, Marxists weren't very receptive to developments in logic (and related disciplines, like semantics).

On why it's important – imagine solving an equation without being able to rely on the law of identity.

Thanks for that reply, jura. This made me think, though:

But 'meanings' are social, not mathematical.

So, if someone argued that "Nation=Nation", this can be disputed, not because of the symbols (words and letters), but because a "Nation" in the eyes of a fascist has a different 'meaning' to a "Nation" in the eyes of a Communist. The human perspective must come into play.

Am I on the right track here, or am I making a fundamental error?

You are right, meanings of any language are social and develop historically, but logic is not interested in that (just like sociology is not usually interested in the phylogenesis of humans, although humans have developed historically). And of course a fascist and a communist have different concepts of nation. But when, for example, the former makes an argument, say, just by thinking aloud on her own, e.g.:

Every nation has an inalienable right to its territory.
Inalienable rights can be defended by any means necessary, including genocide.
Therefore, the territory of a nation can be defended by any means necessary, including genocide.

– she presupposes that both occurences of term "nation" (in the first premise and in the conclusion) refer to the same thing. Otherwise the argument would be invalid. See what I mean?

Further to my last posts, jura; on 'mathematical symbols', It could be argued that "11=11" can be disputed.

If the first "11" is held to 'mean' 'base 10' 11, whilst the second is held to 'mean' 'base 3' 11, this 'means' that it is untrue that "11=11". 11 doesn't equal 4.

The 'meaning' of something can't be assumed, because it is social.

Is this where the human centreness of 'dialectics' comes in? Is this what Trotsky is getting at?

[edit - cross-posted with jura's reply]

The base is always presupposed in mathematics. In most cases, "11 = 11" is just a shorthand for the explicit "11_10 = 11_10" (imagine "_10" as "subscript 10"). Of course meanings change and develop historically, but to be able to do anything meaningful in either math or everyday reasoning, you have to presuppose that they are stable. Even when writing a book on how meaning is social, you would presumably have to have a definition of the term "meaning" that you'd use consistently throughout the book.

So, it requires an individual's 'presupposition' to be 'valid'. Does this mean 'logic' is only 'valid' for the isolated individual? Two might not share the same presuppositions. Social 'meaning' is central.

Is this where the 'socialness' of dialectics is relevent?

Isn't this 'presupposition', then, a social concept, not an individual one?

Isn't it the very instability of reality what Trotsky is getting at?

Yes, it is (a socially constructed, if it cheers you up) presupposition of logic that in an argument, the meaning of terms does not change. It has to hold for anyone interested in making valid arguments.

Trotsky may be getting at the "instability of reality", but that's not something any moder logician would dispute or even care for. Logic is not an empirical science, it's not interested in reality. Trotsky's argument that symbols printed on paper are not identical completely misses the point of the "law of identity".

Thanks for your answers, jura.

Sorry about the cross-posting/interruptions - you've got me thinking!

Cheers.

Couldn't it be said then, that 'logic' and the 'law of identity' 'miss the point' of 'reality'? Is this Trotsky's argument? That 'formal logic' doesn't hold in the real, social world?

Yes, that's probably what Trotsky's getting at: That there should be some other form of ("dialectical") logic that can account for change, development etc., i.e., some sort of a general doctrine on movement. This is pretty much the standard orthodox Marxist view.

Presumably, such dialectics would have to be a very broad empirical discipline or a meta-science generalizing the results of other empirical disciplines. But, interestingly, its research program has been limited to repeating the same old discredited examples over and over again (boiling point of water etc.), occasionally adding a new one (the corpuscular-wave nature of particles being a favorite one in the USSR) – i.e., little to no empirical research, and armchair philosophy in its place. It also seems like physics has been able to deal with change and development for the past few hundred years pretty well without Trotsky's or anyone else's dialectical musings. I believe there is nothing to be gained from this tradition of "dialectics of nature", neither for our understanding of capitalism nor of the world generally.

I couldn't agree more, jura: I have no time for 'dialectics of nature', either.

But then, neither did Trotsky, apparently:

'Dialectics' is about human understanding of nature.

Once more, thanks very much for a stimulating discussion.

Time to re-read the Trotsky link, in the light of our exchange!

Thanks for that link Raylon - is that kinda not what marxes theory of value would say likewise, that in a perfect matter commodities would be exchanged at their values? Im sure i read something like that to that effect in capital, but cant for the life of me remember where...

Incedentally, I was reading somewhere (cant remember where again - god my brain is so fuzzy), that Adam Smith in his explanation of why diamonds are more valuable than water had started from a marginalist view towards his final labour determining the value view later on...

I also think Capital wouldn't be much different in substance, but i reckon hed have had a couple of chapters explaining why the labour theory of value trumps marginal utility. (probably complete with awesome footnotes slagging off various marginalist economists ha!!)

this discussion is really helpful for my philsophy of language lbird and jura

Funny yesterdays tutorial i raised a point similiar to whats touched on this discussion Freges sense and reference. I argued that reference would have to rely on an absolute static conception of identity which i felt suitable for most objects we encounter since they are subject to a lot of the changes that you both discuss above.

The example we are given from frege is that the cognitivly disimilar propositions:
the morning star is a planet
the evening star is a planet
have the same truth value by virtue of the proposition 'the morning star is the evening star'

My queiry was, assuming for the sake of argument that this is not in the realm of fiction that even though annakin skywalker = darth vader
that the proposition that annakin skywalker is a jed (T)i has a different truth value to darth vader is a jedi(F) which goes to show that objects are subject to change.

Sorry for the shameless derailing of this thread, but ive got an essay coming up on this stuff soon!!!

Not sure if he said that actually, though I think it kinda gels well with simple reproduction as an important abstraction from the surface appearances of capitalist accumulation. Likewise the average rate of profit is what one could see as a Marxian conception of equilibrium (since the average rate of profit is the mechanism by which labor time gets distributed across the branches of production) but this is only an 'ideal average' as Rubin says, an equilibrium that can never get reached in reality.

I think Shaikh wrote on this, at least he worked on some papers on marxian competition and value but I haven't read them yet, maybe there's something in there.

No idea on Smith (though I can fathom it to be that way, kinda like, oh look diamonds and water, hmm now what do they have in common? oh right, labor. I would say that's the opposite approach to Marx's even though it may appear otherwise), agreed on the latter. Marginalism is vulgar political economy with a vengeance so I'm sure he'd have some fun with that (akin to other heterodox economists who poke holes into neoclassical theory)

If anyone is interested in taking this attempt to discuss ‘dialectics’ further forward, please contribute.

To continue with the example used above, this leads us to see that whether a tin of peas is ‘food’, ‘commodity’ or ‘weapon’ is dependent on social relationships. In other words, counting ‘tins of peas’ tells us nothing about ‘food’, ‘commodities’ or ‘weapons’: any given ‘tin of peas’ could be, at any point in time, all, some or none of those social categories. ‘Quantitative’ values work at a different, lower level to ‘qualitative’ values.

I think it was Railyon who expressed the hope to do future research on ‘quantifying’ (Marx’s concept of) ‘value’: I’d be interested to hear their thoughts on this point of view, which suggests that the ‘counting of value’ is impossible, because Marx’s ‘value’ is a social relationship, not a substantive thing that can be counted.

So, although our ‘tin of peas’ has a ‘real’, concrete existence, outside of human perception of it, the decision of ‘what’ it is, for human practical usage, and thus how it is ‘understood’, is a variable, social decision. To ‘count’ presupposes a pre-existing social decision on what it is being counted.

And this ‘social decision’ is in the realm of ‘ideology’, of class perspectives. Thus, any researcher attempting to look into ‘value’, if they are to maintain any position of human ‘objectivity’, has to declare their inescapable perspective prior to engaging upon that research, never mind the mere act of ‘presentation’. This also undermines the view, expressed by some posters, that ‘dialectics’ is a matter of ‘presentation’ only.

To understand ‘Value’, one has to adopt the proletarian, Communist, class perspective; it simply cannot be understood from the bourgeois, ‘quantitative’, faux-objective method of positivist science, with its ideology of ‘truth’ (a human concept) being the same as the external world of ‘nature’.

I think ‘dialectics’ is this method of locating the human understanding of reality within society: the notion of a ‘dialectics of nature’ is nonsense, since ‘dia-lego’ is ‘talking-through’ [issues], and ‘nature’ has no consciousness or voice outside of human consciousness. Our natural consciousness is a social consciousness (the notion of ‘individual consciousness’ is nonsensical), and ‘social’ also means the ‘ideological’ and ‘political’. In this way, I don’t think, for the proletariat, that ‘dialectics’ and ‘democracy’ can be separated. ‘Truth’ is social.

Perhaps the Stalinist ‘dialectic of nature’ knows of ‘tins of peas’ that can talk, but, personally, I have my doubts.

Price is a social relationship as well, yet it can be counted. Wage is a social relationship, yet it is expressed as a definite quantity of money. The approach that disregards the quantitative aspect of value is alien to Marx who, after all, speaks of the "magnitude" of value and its "measure".

One other thing about value being quantitative:

(From TSV, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm)

I.e., Marx's value is not a purely relational concept (it is not just "exchange value"), otherwise the expression "total value" (as in sum of all values) would not make sense. Even "accumulation of value" would not make sense.

But surely isn't the argument precisely that 'price' and 'wage' are bourgeois concepts, for bourgeois 'counting'? Because the bourgeoisie has to attempt to 'quantify' the unquantifiable 'social relationships'?

Within Communism, and from the proletarian perspective, 'price' and 'wage' are concepts to be rejected and overcome.

Isn't he using these concepts rhetorically, because the 'substance of value' is 'abstract labour-power', and the 'magnitude of value' is 'socially-necessary labour time'.

'Abstract' and 'socially' have social meanings, and thus are qualitative, not quantitative.

It all depends on one's perspective on 'value'. If 'value' is an emergent social property, which has the emergent behaviour of parasitic 'self-expansion', like a vampire, then 'total value' and 'accumulation of value' are 'socio-political' expressions which refer to relationships between things, rather than narrowly 'economic-quantitative' countable things.

Here's Marx quantifying social relationships:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch20.htm

Now you're mixing up things and projecting moral or political concerns onto a discussion about Marx's categories. Marx does have a theory of what (under capitalism) wage is (the amount of money or the price-form which expresses the value of labor power), but that does not mean he does not reject wage-labor. Saying that wage, price or value are relationships which have a quantitative aspect does not mean endorsing them, no more than measuring the speed of a projectile means endorsing shooting people. You seem to have a fear of quantification, which surprises me given your apparent interest in philosophy of science. It's usually the lit-crit lot that's scared of numbers.

To follow your approach, if "value" is (according to you) a "social concept" (and hence "non-bourgeois" or "proletarian") and as such not quantifiable, would communist production be regulated by value? You see, projecting these concerns about the communist future onto this debate is useless, at least at this point.

That it is "abstract" and "social" has, from the quantiative point of view, only one unusual consequence: that it is not practically measurable. However, this is something very different from being purely qualitative. If value didn't have a quantative aspect, then most of Marx's Capital would be redundant. (For an example, try Chapter 11 in Vol. I, "Rate and Mass of Surplus Value", where value magnitudes enter into equations).

I think you could do a lot worse than try and read Capital for yourself. A lot of the concerns you have will disappear. This armchair approach to Marxian categories or dealing exclusively with other people's commentary will lead you nowhere (trust me, been there, done that). With the guides that are available in print and online, you don't have to worry about getting lost on the way.

How does that work? How does the capitalist know his business is doing well, then? Does he consult Marx's esoteric analysis of value? Does he conduct a sociological study of the relationship between him, his workers and every other capitalist in the economy? No, he looks at the numbers in his books. That's because these social relations you keep talking about have a quantitative aspect and can be expressed quantitatively.

I thought you knew that I have read Capital I, and have the other volumes for reference.

That's what's ironic about your advice, because 'trying to read it for myself', but however not understanding it (like many others), is precisely what has got me to here today!

I think that we'll have to 'agree to disagree' on the larger issues, jura, but thanks for your posts, and I will try use them to sharpen my thoughts.

Then frankly, I don't understand how you can deny value its quantitative aspect when the first volume is full of examples which involve numbers.

That's precisely the wider issue, mate!

But, for now at least, rather than engage with you on issues, like the necessity for democracy within Communism and science, about which I know you have expressed reservations before, I'd rather discuss with posters, especially those new to dialectics, about my examples given above, which attempt to try to explain dialectics, both to myself and others.

Does anyone find them helpful in any way?

Otto Bauer wrote an article on the 40th year of Capital (this page on corroborates jura's point). He shows the categories of the Science of logic operating in the first chapters of Capital quite clearly (against the usual picture by the 'Hegelian marxists', Dunayevskaya et al. of the Second international as not understanding the dialectic or whatever).

Also it's surprising to read this "second international" marxist Bauer complain about vulgar Marxism and how little people in the workers movement have really grasped Marx's work (on this page he gives a nice summary of what propositions vulgar marxism is constructed of: being determines consciousness, history is the history of class struggle, etc.).