Further musings upon ‘Marx’s Method’ and ‘Science’
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The November 2013 edition of Socialist Standard, in the feature on pages 10-12, titled ‘Karl Marx: Anthropologist’, refers to the book Karl Marx, Anthropologist, by Thomas C. Patterson (2009). The quote below is taken from pages 93-4 of that book.
Patterson wrote:Marx (1857 8/1973 100 8; 1861 3/1971 536 7) addressed the relation between appearances and reality in the Grundrisse and Theories of Surplus Value, where he provided a framework – a point of departure – for clarifying problems in order to gain practical understanding of everyday life in capitalist society.[analogy]
The method he developed was analogous to peeling an onion layer by layer, revealing its internal structure with each successive layer until reaching its core, and then reassembling the whole.
[technique]
The technique involved looking behind and beneath superficial appearances, moving from the perceived concrete appearances by a process of abstraction (breaking the whole into mental constructs) and then back to the newly appreciated concrete whole with a greater understanding both of the unity of parts and whole and of the inner dynamics, structure, and contradictions of that totality.
Marx’s ongoing historical analyses of particular societies underwrote a general conception of society which provided both a framework and a set of questions for further detailed, empirical sociohistorical studies of those and other historically specific societies. My goal in this section is to consider the conceptual underpinnings of his dialectical anthropology and some of its implications for anthropology today.
[my bold, subtitles and breaks]
Given our recent discussions on scientific method, Pannekoek and dialectics, I thought that this quote could provide a starting point for some further discussion about Marx’s method, that is, ‘the conceptual underpinnings’ referred to by Patterson.
[analogy]
I have some questions about Patterson’s analogy for Marx’s method. Who or what decides what constitutes the ‘onion’ to be revealed? Is the onion a given, which presents itself for examination? If so, wouldn’t this constitute ‘induction’? Again, who or what decides what constitutes each ‘layer’, or ‘its core’? Are these self-evident? Does the ‘onion’ thrust itself forward and actively disrobe itself of ‘layers’ and expose its ‘core’ for the passive observer? If so, this would constitute an analogy which would fit nicely with 19th century positivist science.
But… ‘peeling’ is a conscious activity (the onion doesn’t peel itself), which suggests that the ‘peeler’ is an independent part of this process. That is, both an active ‘peeler’ and an ‘onion’ to be peeled are required. A ‘peeler’ can’t pretend an ‘onion’ exists, but without an active peeler the ‘onion’ remains both unidentified and intact. The ‘onion’ must be selected by the ‘peeler’, for their further active attentions. If this interpretation of the analogy is accepted, then it would be at odds with Engels’ philosophy of science, because within nature only human consciousness and activity can fulfil the role of ‘peeler’. This stance destroys the positivist notion of ‘Truth’ and ‘Objective Knowledge’. The ‘peeler’ plays an inescapably creative and selective part in the process of gaining ‘knowledge’ of ‘onions’. ‘Scientific Knowledge’ would always be social, and any notion of ‘objectivity’ would have to take the form of ‘Social Objectivity’. The knowledge of ‘onions’ is a social construct.
[technique]
Perhaps we can answer our conundrum about Patterson’s analogy by looking at the ‘technique’, which he argues that Marx employed. Patterson says that Marx starts from the “perceived concrete appearances”. Since ‘perception’ is always social, and even our senses (which are a part of our perceptual system, together with our mind) are socially developed (and not fixed, individual, biological attributes), this starting point for the process of human understanding must be the society within which the perceivers are living. This means that the starting point, in Patterson’s analogy, is not the perceived ‘onion’, but the social theory which the perceivers employ to determine the extent and content of the ‘onion’ to be ‘peeled’. Patterson regards this as Marx’s “process of abstraction (breaking the whole into mental constructs)”. The first move in this ‘process of abstraction’ must be the determination by humans of the meaning of the ‘onion’, and what counts as its layers, core, and all their relationships. The ‘onion’ is then examined, to confirm the preceding theoretical framework. This ‘peeling’ of the ‘onion’ must follow the ‘process of abstraction’, to give a detailed “newly appreciated concrete whole”.
To me, this process is the meaning of ‘the unity of theory and practice’, or ‘praxis’. It is ‘praxis’ that gives “greater understanding both of the unity of parts and whole and of the inner dynamics, structure, and contradictions of that totality”. Practice is essential to produce understanding, but that practice is necessarily preceded by theorisation.
Furthermore, I’d argue that the method of 19th century positivism, empiricism and induction, which insists that the starting point is the ‘onion’ which itself determines its being (a being which humans can access with a neutral, non-social, non-political scientific method), does not correspond to Marx’s method. In fact, Marx’s scientific method corresponds more closely to the ideas of modern 20th century philosophers of science, like Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Lakatos, who all stressed the active part played by humans in producing scientific knowledge. This viewpoint has also been obscured by Engels’ reversion, from the insights of Marx (the trained philosopher) in the 1840s, to a ‘materialism’ similar to that which existed before Marx wrote, and which was the basis of a 19th century ‘science’ which so influenced Engels (the amateur philosopher).
Hi LBird if you are interested there's a conversation on the Division of Labour thread which could well be developing into a subject dear to you. Democratic safeguards, human potential etc. Who knows it could well turn out to be more fruitful in a generalised sense than the narrow previous discussions on the subject matter of who said what and how it relates to defining a socialist democratic scientific method?I personally would welcome any contribution you care to make regarding how we go about peeling the onion even if it occasionally brings tears to my eyes.
Brian wrote:I personally would welcome any contribution you care to make regarding how we go about peeling the onion even if it occasionally brings tears to my eyes.[my extended bold]It might bring tears to your eyes, Brian, to realise that you've answered your own philosophical question!Simply put, 'We'. Active humanity.The 'onion' doesn't disrobe itself to the passive viewer, as positivist science, Engels, Dialectical Materialism, and 'common sense', popular science, all seem to believe.And once we say 'We', we say 'Society'. And drag in politics, ideology, class, etc.There is no neutral scientific method that allows the onion to present itself unbidden.Anyone who says that 'there is' is trying to pull the wool over our collective eyes. That includes Leninist parties and bourgeois scientists.
I've just come across this text, and I'm still working my way through it.The Tradition of Scientific Marxism, by John Holloway.http://marxmyths.org/john-holloway/article.htmBut here is an excerpt which is to my political and scientific taste:
Holloway wrote:The notion of Marxism as scientific socialism has two aspects. In Engels’ account there is a double objectivity. Marxism is objective, certain, ‘scientific’ knowledge of an objective, inevitable process. Marxism is understood as scientific in the sense that it has understood correctly the laws of motion of a historical process taking place independently of men’s will. All that is left for Marxists to do is to fill in the details, to apply the scientific understanding of history.The attraction of the conception of Marxism as a scientifically objective theory of revolution for those who were dedicating their lives to struggle against capitalism is obvious. It provided not just a coherent conception of historical movement, but also enormous moral support: whatever reverses might be suffered, history was on our side. The enormous force of the Engelsian conception and the importance of its role in the struggles of that time should not be overlooked. At the same time, however, both aspects of the concept of scientific socialism (objective knowledge, objective process) pose enormous problems for the development of Marxism as a theory of struggle.If Marxism is understood as the correct, objective, scientific knowledge of history, then this begs the question, ‘who says so?’ Who holds the correct knowledge and how did they gain that knowledge? Who is the subject of the knowledge? The notion of Marxism as ‘science’ implies a distinction between those who know and those who do not know, a distinction between those who have true consciousness and those who have false consciousness.This distinction immediately poses both epistemological and organisational problems. Political debate becomes focussed on the question of ‘correctness’ and the ‘correct line’. But how do we know (and how do they know) that the knowledge of ‘those who know’ is correct? How can the knowers (party, intellectuals or whatever) be said to have transcended the conditions of their social time and place in such a way as to have gained a privileged knowledge of historical movement? Perhaps even more important politically: if a distinction is to be made between those who know and those who do not, and if understanding or knowledge is seen as important in guiding the political struggle, then what is to be the organisational relation between the knowers and the others (the masses)? Are those in the know to lead and educate the masses (as in the concept of the vanguard party) or is a communist revolution necessarily the work of the masses themselves (as ‘left communists’ such as Pannekoek maintained)? .The text above (containing the quote) from Holloway is actually chapter 7 taken from his book Change the World Without Taking Power.http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745329185I’ve also found an interesting quote from Lukacs in the previous chapter, which might give food for thought on our discussions about the ‘material’.
Lukacs, quoted by Holloway, p. 107, wrote:[science’s] underlying material base is permitted to dwell inviolate and undisturbed in its irrationality (‘non-createdness’, ‘givenness’) so that it becomes possible to operate with unproblematic, rational categories in the resulting methodically purified world. These categories are then applied not to the real material substratum… but to an ‘intelligible’ subject matter.Clearly, this is relevant to our recent discussions regarding the active human ‘creation’ of ‘scientific knowledge’, rather than this knowledge being just a reflection of a ‘material base’, as naïve realists would have it, following Engels and 19th century positivist science. I’ve quoted Pannekoek enough times already to the effect that he sees ‘scientific laws’, etc., as a human creation, not as ‘material truths’ uncovered by ‘discovery science’.Furthermore, Holloway goes on to discuss the history behind the notion of ‘the creation of knowledge’.
Holloway, p. 109, wrote:The eighteenth century philosopher Giambattista Vico formulated the link between understanding and making with particular force when he made his central principle the idea that verum et factum convertuntur: the true and the made are interchangeable, so that we can only know for certain that which we have created. An object of knowledge can only be fully known to the extent that it is the creation of the knowing subject. The link between knowledge and creation is central for Hegel, for whom the subject-object of knowledge-creation is the movement of absolute spirit, but it is with Marx that the verum-factum principle acquires full critical force.[my bold]I think this is very interesting and relevant, and if comrades have any comments, critical or supportive, I’d be keen to read them. I’m certainly aware that I don’t fully understand these issues, but participating on these threads has definitely helped me to progress. I hope that it’s helping other comrades, too.
We don't think much of Holloway's politics, but perhaps this will help:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1274-october-2010/book-reviewsWritten incidentally by someone who is now a member of the Left Unity party.
ALB wrote:We don't think much of Holloway's politics, but perhaps this will help:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1274-october-2010/book-reviewsThanks for that review, ALB. I, too (without having read them in depth, yet) am very doubtful so far about Holloway's politics.But the chapters that I'm reading, regarding our ongoing discussions about 'science', seem to me to be full of interesting and (relatively) easily understood points.Plus, I don't think that the politics of Holloway necessarily flow from his undertanding of 'science'. I think that his philosophy excludes some sorts of politics and 'scientific method' (Engels?, Lenin?) but it doesn't determine those to be adopted. There are other factors involved, I think. Perhaps more discussion between us all will help to tease out some more understanding on our part.I hope we can continue with this, because personally I'm gaining great benefit. I hope others are, too.
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