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A comment on Haug’s Marxismus INKRIT conference, 2013.
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I fully agree with the emphasis placed by Haug on dialectical thinking and with the thesis that the crises of Marxism are the scot paid for the un-dialectical way of dealing with contradictions. In these brief remarks I would like to mention a couple of points that are complementary to this thesis.
Emphasis on dialectics in explaining the crises of Marxism is without any doubt vital. But I would add that these crises are due to the repudiation not only of dialectics but also of value theory in economics and of class analysis in sociology. Dialectics, value theory, and class analysis form the whole that should inform the development of Marxism. Any one of them, separated from the other two, cannot but sow the seeds of the crises of Marxism. These crises have resulted time and again in the transformation of Marxism’s class content into a body of knowledge functional for the reproduction, rather than for the supersession, of capitalism.
I would also like to emphasize – as Haug does - that the repudiation of dialectics, and I would add of the other two legs of Marx’s theory as well, is the outcome of the struggle between the heritage of Marx and the continuous attempt by theories and ideologies with a different class content to penetrate Marx’s thought and prevent it from further developing its potentialities as the theoretical weapon of labour in the continuously changing contours of the struggle between capital and labour. The application of dialectics, class analysis, and value theory resolves Marxism’s contradictions by rediscovering the revolutionary content of the theory in a continuously changing social environment. Let me briefly focus on dialectics, which plays a major role in Haug’s paper.
What I think Marxists should do is to extract dialectics both as a Weltanschauung and as a method of social research from Marx’s own writings. Having done this, it becomes clear why the repudiation of Marx’s dialectics cannot but lead to the debacle (crisis) of Marxism, to some genetically modified versions of Marx’s heritage. The key here is the difference between dialectical logic and formal logic. Here, I will only hint at it.
It is commonly accepted even by a large number of Marxists that there is only one type of logic, formal logic at the centre of which stands mathematics in all its different branches. How many times have we not heard the objection: 2+2 is always equal to 4, no? No. • It all depends on what we want to measure and on how we want to measure it. For example, our system of recording the time of the day goes from 0 to 23, so that 24=0 and 24+2 is not 26 but 2. In mathematics this is expressed as 262, modulo 24. Now consider a system going from 0 to 3. Then, 40 and 2+2 0, modulo 4. This is sufficient to dispel the notion that 2+2 is always = 4. Even in mathematics there are no unquestionable truths.
But I would go even further. If our time span is one day, 23+1 is 24. If it is two days, 23+1 is 0. In fact, 24 is both the end point of the first day and at the same time the beginning of the second day. Thus 2+2 is both 4, as the end of the first period, and zero, as the beginning of the second period. However, once an arithmetical system (i.e. a convention) is chosen, e.g. modulo 4, 2+2 is always both0 and4 and not for example 6 or 10.
But the fact that 2+2 can be 0 or 4,modulo 4, is not an example of dialectical thinking. It is an example of temporal thinking without which dialectics becomes barren intellectuality. Onve a convention (e.g. modulo 4) and a physical reality (e.g. one day) are chose 2+2 is 4. This situation concerns a realized (physical) reality.
It is my contention that one of the major features of Marx’s dialectics is that reality is always and at the same time both realized and potential. It follows that (1) realized reality is the crystallization of the potentials it contains, (2) that realized reality can change only because of the emergence of different potentialities, and (3) that the potentials can be contradictory to the realization because that realization is itself contradictory. These are (some of) the rules that apply to the realm of potentialities and to its relation to the realm of the realized.
The rules of formal logic apply only to realized reality. But they are not alien to dialectical logic. They are encompassed within dialectical logic, which encompasses both aspects of reality. • Thus, to give an example, in formal logic and thus in realized reality, if A=A, A cannot be different from A. But if the analysis of the potentials is introduced, A=A and AA are both true because A is always equal to itself as a realized entity but at the same time it is potentially different from itself if the potentials it contains are contradictory to that realization.
Now, what is important in Marx is that a realized reality is the outcome of the concretization of contradictory potentials. This is the difference with Engel’s dialectics of nature. Water can turn into ice because the external conditions change. But it does not change due to internal contradictory potentials. There is an ontological difference between the two movements.
Aclassic example of Marxism’s crisis is the emergence of reformism. The fight for reforms belongs to Marx’s heritage. Reformism, on the other hand, is its genetic transformation into something alien to it due to the penetration into it of theories with a capitalist class content. It is at this point that the crisis of Marxism emerges. • And it is only by reverting to Marx’s unadulterated class content that those contradictions are resolved.
