This article was downloaded by: [FU Berlin] On: 27 June 2012, At: 14:29 Publisher: Routledge Informa

Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Capitalism Nature Socialism

Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcns20

The limits of dialectical presentation as a key category of Marx's theoretical selfreflection

Frieder Otto Wolf Lecturer
a

Institute of Philosophy, Free University of Berlin

Version of record first published: 23 May 2006

To cite this article: Frieder Otto Wolf Lecturer (2004): The limits of dialectical presentation as a key category of Marx's theoretical self-reflection, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 15:3, 79-85 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1045575042000247266

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sublicensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages

whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM

VOLUME

15

NUMBER

3 (SEPTEMBER 2004)

The Limits of Dialectical Presentation as a Key Category of Marxs Theoretical Self-reection

Frieder Otto Wolf

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

However considerable his powers of self-reection, Marx was no more able to look over his own shoulders than other humans before and after him. Historical experience with the continued reading of his texts has helped, however, to gain greater clarity about some problems raised by Marxs work. This will be especially helpful for building bridges that link strands of different theoretical traditions, beyond the boundaries of ofcial and semi-ofcial marxisms. The following is another attempt at elucidating the blind spot left by Marxs occasional advances towards a self-reective description of the difference between Hegels and his own dialectics. It presumes that it is not viable to try to dene this difference in terms of the distinction between substance and method, as Lukacs has tried to do in 1923: As Lukacs himself had to nd out, dialectics is not a method to be developed out of some substantial argument, in order to be then applied to another strand of substantial argument. The methodological difference between dialectical thinking as such and right dialectical thinking cannot be made, properly speaking, because there is no such thing as false dialectical thinking. For Hegel as well as for Marx the dialectic is supposed to be the very movement of the Sache selbst. of the reality to be grasped. It is, therefore, properly unthinkable to read Marxs Capital as an application of Hegels logic.1 Neither can one simply oppose the materialist dialectic of Marx to the idealist form taken by Hegels dialectic, because we are unable to clearly spell out how the rst is opposed to the second without having recourse to reective categories so broad as to be unable to differentiate between the specic materiality and contradiction (Althusser) of each single subject-matter (real object) under discussion. The specular character of Hegelian dialectics always draws it back to the very same universal spirit which is found everywhere, neglecting singularities and material, contingent, given specicities of human life on the planet Earth in this present phase of history. A notion of excentricity may be more helpful in this respect. This would link the real difference of such theoretical elds as the commodity form, the capital form or the wage labor form (each with its specic fetishisms, which are not all one, as Lukacs misleadingly thought in his Fichtean re-reading of Capital) to a
Cf. the painstaking refutation by D. Wolf, Der dialektische Widerspruch im Kapital (Hamburg: VSAVerlag, 2000); for the eld of political economy, which had been amply treated by Hegel, see ` D. Losurdo, Hegel e la liberta dei moderni (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1999). ISSN 1045-5752 print/ISSN 1548-3290 online/04/030079-07 # 2004 The Center for Political Ecology DOI: 10.1080/1045575042000247266
1

80

FRIEDER OTTO WOLF

multiplicity of determinate and limited standpoints and perspectives within the process of historical reality. These have to be properly combined and articulated to re-constitute the capitalist mode of production as the object of knowledge of Marxs critique of political economy. How is this articulation possible? To nd an answer to this question, Marxs notion of the limits of dialectical presentation is especially helpful. The distinction used by Marx in a relatively early stage of his elaboration of Capital between an order of research (Forschung) and an order of presentation (Darstellung) does not, as such, help us to meet the challenge of pinning down the difference between Marxs and Hegels dialectics. However, it does reveal a key point, namely, that such an distinction would be impossible in the case of Hegels dialectics, where each step of the movement of the concept is always already a moment of real development and where, therefore, the conceptual articulation of anything makes its presentation and the research going into it coincide completely. This indicates that Marxs and Hegels dialectical forms of presenting the subject matter of their theoretical work refer to different attitudes to the real: In Hegels case, it is always already present in the very movement of conceptual development, which is identical to the real process; whereas in Marxs case, there is another process, the process of researching, of intellectually appropriating reality, which is a necessary, though possibly vanishing mediator between the development of the concept and the movements of reality. In this way the Marxian distinction between presentation and research lays the ground for Marxs most signicant self-reective category, for that of the limits of dialectical presentation. These limits stabilize the mediating process, making it impossible for it to vanish entirely, and thereby very clearly demarcate Marxs from Hegels dialectics. In Marx, we nd theoretical objects which cannot be fully constructed by the dialectical order of presentation of his own systematic theory, and which therefore have to be introduced into it in a different way. I contend that this also means that they cannot be fully reproduced in practice by the capitalist mode of production without the concurrent complicity of something else, of some other of the capitalist mode of production. Such objects include money as the specic value commodity, the wage laborer as a key object of Marxs theory, and the social relation of landowners to pieces of the planet Earth. Their very existence has at least one important implication: Whereas in Hegel it is at least possible to mistake the development of the concept (Entwicklung des Begriffs) for an a priori process due to its coinciding with the very process of articulating reality this is no longer possible in Marx, where the dialectical presentation can only begin in time, after the process of research has been basically completed. And by bearing the marks of these limits of dialectical presentation within its very presentation, which at certain points ceases to be dialectical, in order to become merely historical about contingent facts, Marxs dialectics present themselves as being situated, nite and irreversible, like real human practice, in space and time. And this presents us on the theoretical level with the fact that key pieces of the

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

LIMITS OF DIALECTICAL PRESENTATION

81

capitalist mode of production cannot be fully reproduced within the very process of reproduction of capital itself, in other words, that they require the concurrent complicity of other processes. The rst example indicated by Marx is the historical process leading to the singling out of one commodity for the role of the money commodity. The necessity that something play this role results from Marxs systematic analysis and deployment of the forms of value in societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production. However, that any such commodity would assume this role in a stable way, and, moreover, which particular commodity is designated as such, are not amenable to any kind of systematic argument. The narrative of how it came to pass that cattle, Kauri clams, Copper, Silver or Gold served this function within their respective societies, is ultimately the only relevant answer to the question of how they have been singled out for this role. And this must include the retelling of their respective natural histories in other words, how they came into being at all. No amount of subtle renement of Marxs dialectical presentation would yield answers to this question. Neither the concept of value as such, nor the concept of capital, nor other, more complex concepts within Marxs order of presentation, are capable of generating a more relevant answer to this question than the simple act of narrating this specic story. Nor can we imagine that the real process of capital accumulation alone would in any way reproduce the function of money taken by cattle, Kauri clams, Copper, Silver or Gold. Its very capacity to make available sufcient quantities of these results of the geological or biological history of the Earth is, in an important part, dependent on natural processes and contingencies it does not even inuence. And the stability of the money function itself2 seems to be inconceivable without the presence of some centralized political power to guarantee it, at least in the last instance, which capital accumulation as such does not produce out of its own, either. The only thing that may be looked into at this point with any chance of success is whether the capitalist mode of production in its internal historical development which itself is a notion properly unthinkable within a Hegelian or Lukacsian discourse, with its innate tendency to generate notions about the end of history will develop a tendency of reproducing money in a form that is ever more independent from such contingencies, like paper money or electronic money, thereby relegating the money commodity to a role of a last instance, intervening at a time which normally never comes. The second example is certainly more controversial, but also more signicant. It is the existence of the doubly free wage laborer, free from feudal fetters and free from any means of production, as Marx underlines. This certainly is a center-piece of Marxs argument. And it is not just almost anything, given a few adaptations, as in the case of the money-commodity, which will be capable of lling this role. It consists of human beings, with their gender relations and reproductive capacity, within some specic historical constellation of human ecology, and within some
2

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

M. Heinrich, Die Wissenschaft vom Wert (Munster: Westfalisches Dampfboot, 1999).

82

FRIEDER OTTO WOLF

specic human history and tradition. That such human beings do take this role, as it were in sufcient quality and quantity, cannot be theoretically reconstructed from the dialectical order of presentation of Marxs theory. Nor can it be conceived as a result of the enlarged reproduction of capital as such. The key point here is the following: Neither the historical genesis of this central gure of Marxs theory, nor its continued reproduction fully falls into the limited realm of Marxs dialectically presented theory. The emergence of markets as imperatives3 and the separation of the immediate producers from their means of production, as it started in Western Europe in the 14th century, is a complex, overdetermined historical process of class struggle which cannot be reconstructed as an act of self-reproduction by capital. And that common people are continuously accepting to take their roles as wage-laborers, instead of dropping out, and are not dragging their feet or sabotaging the process, continues to be a stake of day-to-day class struggles, even in the most advanced societies, where the capitalist mode of production dominates [herrscht] (Marx). This can be easily seen from any consultation of the current staff management manuals which are centered on strategies and tactics to overcome this problem. Moreover, this elementary class struggle is impregnated by gender struggles, as human beings happen to be sexual creatures reproducing themselves sexually and by struggles determining the upbringing of future generations. And this will be in vain, if humankind, by continuously disregarding the ecological limits dened by the carrying capacity of the ecological systems it is using to reproduce itself, would ruin the very conditions of its own biological existence. Again, all this cannot be reproduced by the very process of reproduction of the capital relation: Even after the real subsumption of labor under the capitalist production process has been achieved, the outcome of such extra-capitalist struggles, which follow their own logic of operation, will continue to be an essential determinant for the provision of the capitalist accumulation with the right quantity and quality of human beings in the role of wage laborers, including the industrial reserve army which is so functional for capital in its exploitative relation to wage labor. The third signicant example of such an explicit systematic limitation of Marxs dialectical method of presenting his theory can be found in his theory of land rent. Before discussing theories of absolute and differential rent, Marx, in a somewhat neglected theoretical development, takes pains to insist that he is only discussing the social relation between landlords and other social classes (and the relation to the very land it implies) in so far as it falls within the limits of his own inquiry on the reproduction process of capital. He carefully underlines that this social relation as such remains outside of his inquiry and that it is, at the same time, functioning continuously as a constantly present foundation [fortwahrende Grundlage] of the reality of the capitalist process of (re-)production.
3

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

E. M. Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999).

LIMITS OF DIALECTICAL PRESENTATION

83

This does not imply that it exists out there as a kind of secure external anchor of the system. The far-reaching and, indeed, destructive effects of the ways in which capital takes up and reproduces the relations of humans to the land were well known in Marxs time and are amply discussed in Capital, being a key subject-matter of the literature on agriculture since the late 18th century.4 The industrialization of agriculture and urban speculation and the destruction this can work on the fertility of the earth, i.e., on its elementary possibility of being put to human uses are just two aspects of this capacity of capitalist accumulation to reach out beyond its own limits. The point remains valid, however, that there is no systematic way of reconstructing this inescapable reaching out of the capitalist mode of production. The impacts of this reaching out do remain, from a purely capitalist perspective, contingent and unpredictable, both in their successes for example, the gaining of land which is so important to the old Faust as well as in failures the catastrophes produced in human ecologies insofar they are based on capitalist land use. A historical political ecology may be able to explain them retrospectively, and even to predict their growing probability, but it will have to rely, in turn, on understanding the specic dynamics of the capitalist mode of production, in order to grasp what is to be expected and what is at stake today. At this point self-aware Hegelians will have a meaningful objection: After all, Hegels dialectic is not a process of a priori thinking. It embodies the process of thought in so far it reproduces concrete reality, which is studied and taken up in the process becoming therefore speculative and empirical at once in one single movement. Thus Marxs way of proceeding is not so distinct from this after all, but only loads the reection with a number of distinctions to be relativised by truly dialectical thinking. To reply to this objection I should like to take a detour: In his later writings, Louis Althusser turned his attention to the uneven order of presentation followed in Capital and, later on, to the unavoidable role of contingency in theorizing historical struggles (in his writings on aleatory materialism, in the 1980s.5 These theoretical initiatives have been neglected, in part, because they seemed to come out of the blue, without any clearly recognizable motivation, and also for well-known biographical and historical reasons. Yet I think it useful to show that the problematic of the limits of dialectical presentation as I have outlined it, gives us a meaningful context in order to understand these theoretical initiatives, and to determine, again, their limitations.
4 U. Grober, Deep Roots: A Brief Conceptual History of Sustainable development, in J. Spangenberg, ed., Sustainable Development Roots and Perspectives (Manuscript to be published 2004). 5 L. Althusser, Avant-propos, in G. Dumenil, Le concept de loi economique dans Le Capital(Paris: Maspero, 1978); L. Althusser, Le courant souterrain du materialisme de la rencontre (Ms., publ. in. Id., Ecrits philosophiques et politiques [T. I, Paris: Presses Universitaires Francaises, 1994]); A. Negri, Notes on the Evolution of the Thought of the Later Althusser, in Callari and Ruccio, eds., Postmodern Materialism and the Future of Marxist Theory: Essays in the Althusserian Tradition (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1996), pp. 5168.

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

84

FRIEDER OTTO WOLF

Althussers insistence on the plurality of orders in the theoretical presentation of Capital can be interpreted as his way of pointing to Marxs handling of the limits of his dialectical presentation of which he has been fully aware, making use of historical accounts at specic points of his argument. Althussers stress on Marxs positing of certain concepts as opening a theoretical eld which can then be analyzed, can be seen as a way of acknowledging the existence of specic starting points for some specic stretch of the development of the concept in Marxs Hegelese, which we may fruitfully see as being circumscribed by the limits of a certain theoretical eld. The essential point is that all this will never be resolved into one all-embracing process of reproduction, so that there will always remain an element of contingency about the constellation of processes effectively occurring and their eventual outcomes, a contingency which has to be reected in the respective theoretical articulation. Althussers insistence on the axiomatic character of the concepts posited, and of the absolutely aleatory character of material processes as such, however, can be criticized as an effect of a limited perspective on the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production. On the one hand, Althusser has neglected the difcult analysis of the forms in Marxs Hegelese6 which serve as a meta-structure of Marxs theory of the capitalist mode of production the coherence of which amounts to more than to a contingent juxta-position of theoretical elds. On the other hand, Althusser tends to reduce the structural logics of other dimensions of enquiry to an unjustied alternative of being reducible to one theoretical eld or remaining within the specularity of ideological self-reection. For if we fully accept the multi-layered structure of the capitalist mode of production as an object of theoretical analysis, while allowing for the structured reality of these other processes with their other places of determination, we can also begin to see them as no less theoretically determined, with dynamics to be reconstructed by means of some respective theory. By an intelligent combination of problematic and theories we may, therefore, well advance beyond the chaotic indeterminacy that presents itself from the point of view of the reproduction of capital alone. But we shall never arrive at a Hegelian kind of holistic theory of the entire totality once we accept the contingency of constellations of objects and of theories. This has, I think, important implications for the dialogue between theoretically reective Marxists and theoretical work coming from other lines of thought within the plurality of social movements struggling today (like feminists, ecologists, antiracists or defenders of indigenous people7). Instead of addressing them as competing world-views with which there may be at most a precarious dialogue of the deaf, like the dialogue between ofcial Marxism and ofcial Christianity in the 1960s, we should begin to understand them as other lines of inquiry arising from theoretical
6 ` See J. Ranciere, Le concept de critique de leconomie politique et la critique de leconomie politique, in L. Althusser, et al, Lire le Capital (Paris: Maspero, 1965), and Id, How to Use Lire le Capital, Economy and Society, 5, 3, 1976. 7 A. Salleh, Ecofeminism as Politics Nature, Marx, and the Post-modern (London: Zed Books, 1997).

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012

LIMITS OF DIALECTICAL PRESENTATION

85

elds different from those analyzed within Marxs articulated analysis of the capitalist mode of production. Accordingly, they open upon and allow us to learn important insights about other dimensions of the real world which we need to understand in order to develop a relevant historical practice ourselves, and to nd non-instrumentalist forms of alliance-building with all the forces calling into question the domination of the capitalist mode of production within our societies. November, 2003

Downloaded by [FU Berlin] at 14:29 27 June 2012