The Material Imagination as Self-Positing Praxis

8/9/2019 The Material Imagination as Self-Positing Praxis

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The Material Imagination as Self-Positing Praxis 1

Science, Ideology & Revolutionary Consciousness

Preface

Philosophy attempts to rationalize that which one knows by instinct and temperament

Since my first confrontation with Marxismwhile still unable to buy beerI was drawn into its orbit by

its two most important qualities; the first was its apparent ability to reasonably explain a vast complex

of lived realities as the product of a specific historical development, and the second was that it

simultaneously seemed to clear the ground for changing those very conditions as an act of

revolutionary will. Of course this was an instinctive attraction but it has persisted until today. As I

deepened my engagement on the bumpy road of militant political activity and Marxist theory itself, I

began to oscillate between an analysis of those conditions and the search for an effective activity

necessary to change those conditions. Little by little I began to feel trapped between elaborating the

cause of my being and simultaneously asserting the freedom from the causes in my own activity and

that of the working class. Marxs Third Thesis on Feuerbach addresses this exact difficulty, but only

asserts a solution in a highly enigmatic form. Marx does not clearly articulate a solution. How an

organization resolves this problem is fundamental and will literally define an organization and

position it in its relation to revolutionary practice be they vanguardists, spontaneitist or reformist

hybrids. However, to discover in an organization a clearly articulated position relating historical

determination to revolutionary freedom is damn nearly impossible due to the appallingly slippery use

of such words as ideology, science, method, dialectics, materialism, idealism, theory, consciousness,

concrete, abstract, subject, object, etc. as though they were self-evident; not one of them is self-

evident. It is a theoretical hornets nest. What follows is neither an exegesis nor an academic

contribution to the question, but rather a speculative and somewhat idiosyncratic positing of a

solution for the difficulty in which I find myself. Before plunging into the theoretical, I want to make

clear my practical purposeall the stuff that happens between the first coffee and lights out. My instinct and

temperament naturally pulls me towards activity; given the choice between the library shelf and filling

wine bottles with kerosene, I would choose the bottles every time. Not only do I want to make

intelligent and relevant choices between the time in the library or basement but also have a clear idea

1 Praxis: Praxis is the exposure of the mystery of man as an onto-formative being, as a being that formsthe (socio-human)

reality and thereforealso grasps and interprets it (i.e. reality both human and extra human, reality in its totality) Mans praxisis not practical activity as opposed to theorizing; it is the determination of human beings in the process of forming reality.K. Kosik, The Dialectic of the Concrete.


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of the purpose of the activity. If I am utilizing Marxist theory, to understand some aspect of social

development for example, I want to know why this is important and how it will clear the ground for

revolutionary activity. This is all too often simply ignored, even amongperhaps especially

amongthe theoretically sophisticated; one delves deeper and deeper and still deeper into these

seemingly important questions, even if the significance of the question appears to reside entirely

within the theory itself. I for one have little interest in producing an analysis of any kind if its primary

purpose is not to release a revolutionary will, my own and that of humanity. I look around. Since the

days of my first confrontation with Marx I see that lived realities have deteriorated far beyond what I

could have imagined, yet the voice of revolutionary Marxism still sounds like a thundering whimper

on the battlefield. This is certainly not what I had counted on. How can we explain this? Of course

we need to look at the actual evolution of the objective historical developments to account for this

this we do with gustobut we also need to ask something else. Is it enough that we unveil the laws

of capitalist development for all to see? Is the unveiling itself adequate to count as revolutionary

praxis? Hidden beneath the structure of an organizations activity is an implicit philosophy that guides

its work. If elaborating the laws of capitalist development is understood as an unveiling, as

demystification from the falsehood of bourgeois ideology, as an investigation into the truth of

phenomena, then we take a position towards our object that is nearly identical to that of the scientist

towards his Petri dish. In essence, in spite of endless assertions to the contrary, this is still the work

of Kautsky and Lenins bourgeois revolutionary intellectuals. What is missing is the active, the

sensualand the subjective side of practice; unless of course we believe that theoretical analysis itself is the

active side of revolutionary praxis suggested by Marx in his First Thesis on Feuerbach.2 I am not

convinced. Nor am I suggesting that we begin to fill up wine bottles or pass out leaflets at each

factory closing to find the active side, this too can be the activity of the bourgeois intellectual towards

his object. Rather, I believe that we must position ourselves in a very different manner in all of our

activities whether analytic, artistic or kinetic; a radical re-positioning that distinguishes our activity

from the manner in which the bourgeois approaches his object. The essence of this re-positioning is

to emboss, in all activity, in all analysis, the self-positing nature of revolutionary volition, the onto-

formativepractice, that is, thepractical, the sensualand the subjective. Marxism is not merely a critique of

existing ideologies, though it is this; neither is it merely an historical method, though it has its

method; nor is it an experimental science, though it certainly has elements that resemble scientific

activity; what will distinguish a revolutionary Marxism is its ability to animate the subjective, the sensual,

and thepracticalside of man, more specifically, his imagination.

Where should I begin?Begin at the beginning; it is always good to begin at the beginning.

2 Marx: First Thesis on Feuerbach The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism that of Feuerbach included is that

the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity,practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the activeside was developed abstractly by idealism which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.


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But where is the beginning?

Here! The beginning is always here.

An Identity Crisis

Since its inception, Marxists, as well as Marx and Engels themselves, sought an identity with science,

partly for historical reasons, partly for theoretical reason and partly for legitimacy reasons. The use of

the phrase Scientific Socialism was an attempt to distinguish a theory that was the result of rigorous

objective analysis rather than fanciful utopian dreams. The cache of the word science since the

Enlightenment is indisputable insofar as it is believed that only in science can we uncover objective

truth, and if Marxism were a science then it could be claimed that proletarian revolution is an

inevitable effect from an identifiable cause. Classical scientific theory claims that through a scientific

analysis of the phenomena of nature as it presents itself to our sensesobservation or

experimentationwe are able to determine an objective truth that is real and quite independent of

human caprice or will. Some Marxists would claim the same for Marxism in the field of social activity.

Through an analysis of the social phenomena that presents itself to us in history, political formation,

economic activity etc, we can identify the objective determinants that can explain the phenomena

without mystification, illusion and without the caprice of human will, indeed the will itself in this

conception is subject to objective analysis through magic of historical materialism, evolutionary

psychology, genetics and other medical practices. This is no small claim, and it is this claim, explicit

and implicit that I would like to refute. Moreover, I would like to formulate a conceptualization of

Marxism that is not reduced to complete voluntarism or its apparent antipode mechanistic causality

that characterizes the main streams of the natural sciences as are they are normally practiced.3

The Nature of Scientific Activity and Marxism

One observation is worth noting from the outset in relation to the status of Marxism as a science.

Such claims of scientific legitimacy are virtually ignored by the scientific community at large. There

are two ways that one might explain this indifference: 1) science itself is driven by bourgeois interest

and entirely subsumed into the net of bourgeois ideology, thus it is in the objective interest of the

bourgeois scientific community to ignore or to remain hostile to the claim, or 2) there is little about

the Marxist approach to social analysis that resembles the actual form of scientific criteria for truth.

Furthermore, one might add that the scientific community is nearly immune to socio-philosophical

critiques of its own work. In the first case there is little doubt that bourgeois interests are steering the

direction of scientific research and application, and one could add that certain theories rise to

3 I use the term science in the sense that has entered common understanding fully aware of the considerable difficulties thatarise when one attempts such board generalizations. I will bracket the question of the real nature of science, which isimportant but not at the moment central to my argument.


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prominence as scientific homologues to particular stages in the development of capitalism but one

would have great difficulty in making the assertion that the relatively modest truth claims of the

natural sciences are ideologically determined by bourgeois interests. One might argue, for instance,

that the second law of thermodynamics is a product of a particular stage of capitalist development

and has a strong ideological character, but the second law has not been proved for all systems or

disproved experimentally, thus it remains an organizational principle not a universal truth claim. If

we take an example of the cold-fusion claim in 1989 by two electro-chemists from the Universities of

Utah and Southampton, we see clearly the self-correcting mechanism that science has that social

theory does not. The experiment was published with great excitement and within weeks the results

of the chemists claims were rejected on the basis of verifiable experimentation. The scientific

community did not break into factions over the belief in cold-fusion. It was universally rejected as

a flawed claim on the basis of experimental testing. Scientific knowledge has a self-correcting

mechanism that is worth understanding. I would argue that in science it is possible to distinguish the

objective truth claims that are relatively protected from ideological distortion from organizational

principles in science that are potentially distorted but are held in suspension as truth claims by serious

scientists themselves. Marxism cannot make this claim. Therefore, I would opt for the second

explanation for the indifference of scientists towards Marxism. Marxism as a science has little in

common with the model of science as handed down to us from Newtonian principles. I hope to

demonstrate that this is not a weakness of Marxism but rather its precise strength in relation to the

classical scientific stance towards objective truth.

The Objects of Knowledge: Natural Sciences and Marxism

The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple.

Nevertheless, the human mind has for more than 2000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it,

whilst on the other hand, to the successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms,

there has been at least an approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is easier of

study than are the cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscope

nor chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both.

Marx, Capital1: 7-8 (My emphasis.)

Marx begins Capital with a description of the value-form of objects as they appear to us as

commodities: the basic unit of capital formation. Commodity objects in a capitalist universe have a

dual nature as simultaneously a use-value and an exchange-value. The use-value is the objects eternal

form, which has no existence apart from its physical properties,4 and the exchange-value its contingent5 form

4Capitalv.1.15 I use the word contingent as opposed to its necessary form, not to mean accidental, but rather subject to forces of atemporary nature that lay external to the form itself.


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under the conditions of capitalism where all sensuous characteristics are extinguished.6 So what is the object

of Marxs investigation: a pair of shoes, a bushel of wheat or a yard of cloth? In fact, the object is

none of these as objects in themselves but only as they appear in thought as commodities or

labor/object in their value form. What appears objective are the social relations constituted by the

commodity form but the objectivity itself is constituted/appears via analysis from a series of

definitions or immanent categories. Marx makes it clear that the commodity is not a thing but rather

social relationships that appear to be relationships expressed as things. Therefore, to hold a yard of

cloth is not to hold a commodity, even fresh from the factory it remains a yard of cloth; one cannot

hold a social relationship. Without the implied social relationship in which the yard of cloth exists,

there is no commodity, nor any object called a commodity. Before we get bogged down in Hegelian

categories of logic, lets stop for a moment to remember that this is only the beginning of the analysis

and is itself very elementary and simple. From this simple beginning Marx builds an extraordinarily

complex analysis of the movement of capitalboth real and immanentas it is expressed in social

relations. We should reflect on the nature of the substitution of the force of abstractionfor microscopes or

chemical reagentsin his method for uncovering the real movement of human relationships.

The classical scientific goal towards the objects of its study is to uncover the laws that govern the

behavior of objects and phenomena independently of human volition. A scientist observes a flame, a

beaker of water and steam. He names them, observes them repeatedly and explains the relationships

between the three elements. Now language and a degree of abstraction are necessary for the scientist

to bring these experiences into consciousness and even higher levels of abstraction are necessary toformulate the laws that govern the appearance of the steam. There can be conflicting explanations of

the outcome that adequately explain the phenomena like Aristotles elemental theory or Daltons

atomic theory. Both explain well the observations but in the wider context of more complex natural

phenomena the atomic theory explains it better. The challenge for the scientist is in fact to remove

himself from the phenomena in order to describe it in such a way that his presence has no effect on

the outcomes. We know, however, from modern quantum theory that in the final analysis this is not

possible, the observer is always part of the observed and influences the outcome of the observation

even if it is imperceptible. However, this is itself an observable phenomenon and can be accountedfor in the development of a theory that explains the phenomena as law-like; what is important here is

that it is NOT the explanation that has the effect on the observed phenomena. 7 The flame, the

beaker of water and the steam will not care if the observer is an Aristotelian or an Atomist. That is to

say that the object/phenomena is not dependent on the conscious intentions of the observer. Water

will boil and produce steam equally for both of them.

6 Capital v.1.1 And further: the existence of the things qua commodities, and the value-relation between the products oflabor which stamps them as commodities, have absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the

material relations arising there from. There it is a definite social relation between men that assumes, in their eyes, thefantastic form of a relation between things. ... This I call the Fetishism ... of commodities. (1867)7 See Gavin KitchingsMarxism and Sciencefor a more complete discussion


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How does this differ from Marxs force of abstractionin the development of his analysis of the value-

form of production? In this Introduction to his Critique of Political Economy, Marx explicitly states that his

method is to start from the abstract and ascend to the concrete, even if the concrete is the real

starting point. But this still leaves us asking what is the object of his analysis? We could argue that the

object of Marxs analysis is everything real, the concrete whole, but obviously this would force us to

make a leap of faith that the object of analysis is actual and real. The concrete whole is a conceptual

category, an idealization, not an object/phenomenon. Science is more restrictive than this. First and

foremost the object of analysis is the value-form as a social relation, that is, mans real reproductive

activity under the conditions of capitalism. But mans real activity is that of social man capable of

acting consciously and reflecting on both his activity and his own consciousness which in turn creates

new conditions of his further activity and conscious development, that is to say, the object of analysis

is mans own self-positing conscious activity.8 If we return to the concept of the commodity in

Marxs simple analysis we can see that the commodity as a social relationship is immediately bound to

mans conscious intention. That is to say, an object only becomes a commodity under specific

conditions of mans conscious intention to buy and sell under the general conditions of capitalist

domination. Where does this leave us? It appears that the object of Marxs analysis is entirely

dependent on his own discursive abstract logical category. The commodity only exists as an object of

analysis abstractly and a change in the form of the abstraction entirely alters not only the form of the

object but also the very existence of the object itself. The water will not boil in this case! The

problem of course is not only that Marxist theory is an analysis of discursive structures but is also

itself a part of the self-conscious intentional in contemporary social relationships. Unlike science,

which believes itself to hold a position of dispassionate objectivity, Marxism is an intentionanalyzing

an ensemble ofintentionswithin which it finds itself. 9 Its claim to objectivity in its search for the laws

of historical movement is a bit like the man who wants to stand on his own shoulders to get a better

view of himself. To summarize this point, the objects/phenomena in a scientific study of nature, may

be, or rather must be expressed in discursive structures in order to analyze them, but are in

themselves not discursive and not affected by those discursive structures. Marxism, on the other

hand, is the theory from which the objects/phenomena themselves emerge from the discursive

structures (symbolic logic) of both the analyst, and the social agents subject to analysis, that are

8 The most eloquent expression that captures the self-positing of man is Marxs own description in Capital: A spiderconducts operations, which resemble those of a weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by theconstruction of his honeycomb cells. But, what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is that thearchitect builds the cell in his mind before he builds it in wax. At the end of every labor process, a result emerges which hadalready been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally. Man not only effects a change of formin the materials of nature; he also realizes his own purpose in those materials, and this is a purpose he is conscious of, itdetermines the mode of his activity with the rigidity of a law, and he must subordinate his will to it. Capitalv1 3:79A better formulation made by Richard Gunn, Whereas general theory stand back from its object and reflects upon it,

Marxist theory situates itself within its object (practical reflexivity) and considers itself constituted through its object(determinant abstraction) p 32 and further if one likes, one can say that Marxism has the moment of contradiction asits object. P 33 Against Historical Materialism Open MarxismVol II (Pluto 1992)


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deeply and specifically bound with its own intention as a self-reflexive praxis. I would argue that this

alone disqualifies Marxism as a science comparable to the form of natural science.10

Back to the Steam: Praxis and Mediation

Heat is added to water and steam emerges. Through continued activity and experimentation it is

discovered that steam itself can be converted from heat energy into mechanical energy to make

wheels turn and from mere mechanical energy can be converted into a commodity. It is specifically

steam in its commodity form that is the driving force to the continued discoveries of the properties

of heat and the development of the laws of thermodynamics. In practice, the commodity form is

inseparable from the higher levels of knowledge of steam heat. Yet, the commodity form of the

scientific practice is the form that is bound to and dependent upon specific discursive social

structures. This is steams contingentform as opposed to its necessaryform. The necessary form of the

steam is also bound to social practice but a social practice that expresses itself as a series ofprocedures

that are inextricably bound to the law-like character of nature and not the discursive practices of

social formation. The commodity form of steam can be abandoned or superseded but this will have

no affect on the necessary social procedures required to assist nature in creating steam. Historically

speaking, contingency is the ground from which necessity is discovered, in other words, in human

praxis contingency is the midwife of all necessity.11

But, both forms of social praxis-contingentand necessary- are still tied to discursive structures, that is to

say, conscious intentions made possible by language. The commodity form of steam and the natural

form of steam both require conscious social intervention that in essence mediates both the particular

consciousness of the form and mediates the existence of the form12. One would be tempted to

conclude from this division that one form of mediation is true (necessity) and the other is false

(contingent). Lukacs makes this sort of division in his History and Class Consciousnesswhen he argues

that an imputedconsciousness is what is rational but unavailable due to the distorting presence of

bourgeois ideology that renders the contingent as somehow false. In this case the imputedwould be

the equivalent to the necessary form of praxis. But the question emerges immediately, what is the

object/phenomenon under analysis that must follow a necessary law-like procedure, and where does

10 Marxism is distinctly NOT a science of the OBJECT nor is it strictly speaking a METHOD OF CRITIQUE on themodel of 18th C. critiques in which the purpose was to remove the false of an argument leaving behind only the truth.11There are some similarities here with Althussers Philosophy of the Encounterand his concept ofaeleatory materialism.However, Althussers entire project is to eliminate all vestiges of historicism and its accompanying idealism, which, whileimportant, can be taken too far. Althusser asserts that the dominant conceptualization of historical movement is that the

whole pre-exists the parts and has within it an essential logic (teleological), i.e. the bourgeoisie emerges within the shell ofFeudalism as the harbingers of capitalisms future. But in aleatory materialism it is the chance encounter of the parts thatcreate the whole, there is no necessity that pre-exists the encounter. (Aleatory: law that depends on a contingent event). For

Althusser the contingent is the only reality and results from uncaused events swerves. It appears that he does notacknowledge labor asprocedural necessitythat mediates nature. Once posited, necessity emerges and takes on a real presence,

though its origins may well have been contingent.12 Alfred Sohn-Rethels Book Intellectual and Manual Labor, A Critique of Epistemology1951 is an important contribution tounderstanding how the value-form of production is reproduced in the on the epistemological grid so to speak.


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one find the imputedconditions that are necessary for the objective statement of the real? In truth the

imputeddoes not exist outside of theoretical abstractions, that is to say, outside of intentions. What is

given to us is perhaps the fact that barricades were not constructed by specific people in a given place

and time. But only one with a specific intention could pose this observation in the first place;

moreover the explanation has no necessary procedural logic. The lack of barricades can be adequately

accounted for by any number of explanations and there would be no self-correcting mechanism

within the theory to verify which is the most adequate explanation.

This seeming impasse where Marxism is unable to make a law-like statement of social activity in

anyway that resembles objectivity and necessity in natural science should only distress us if we stop

our critique here. Marxisms primary characteristic is to analyze and intervene in the socially

contingent, not in the socially necessary procedures of mediation between man and nature. It must

account for or theoretically posit necessity but has little to say about its actuality.13

Consciousness and Language: Cause Effect

If, as I believe, that the socially necessary cannot exist nor is it ever brought into being outside of the

socially contingent, it follows that both are equally real. One is not more real than the other. Notions

of real and false, or illusory or truthful are misleading holdovers from Platonic Hegelian modes of

thought. I believe it would be better to designate two forms of mediation: f i r s t order mediat ions arethose forms of praxis that must conform to the law-like procedure that are within the

object/phenomena and that have a trans-historical quality that would exist independently of the

social system that gave rise to it, and s e cond o rde r med ia t i ons are forms of praxis that exist withinthe realm of intention and contingency, subject to external causality and are dependent on discursive

structures of consciousness always subject to multiple bifurcations14. In real historical practice they

are not necessarily two different activities but rather more often two distinct sides of the same

activity. Under the conditions of capitalism the fault line between the two orders of mediation might

be conceived as the split between abstractlabor (second order) and concretelabor (first order). This is a

direct confrontation with Marxs unfortunate formulation of base and superstructure,15 which, if

13Moishe Postone in his Time, Labor and Social Domination(2003), correctly, I believe, asserts that Marxs immanent critiqueuses categories that are applicable only the conditions of capitalist domination.14Sohn-Rethels concept offirst natureand second natureroughly corresponds to the first and second order mediations as usedhere.15 Following is Marxs mistakenly formulated synthesis of historical materialism. It would be worth the effort todemonstrate that this is more of a metaphorical expression rather than a fully considered outline of his concept. There is noquestion that Marx does not adhere to this mechanistic formulation throughout his works, in fact the language ofmechanistic causality rarely appears as he unfolds the logic of Capital in the Grundrissaor Capital: In the social productionof their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations ofproduction appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these

relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal andpolitical superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production ofmaterial life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that


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never be verified as law-like procedures in practice but they can of course always be fully verified in

the astonishingly intricate and always correct clouds of thought.18

Marx does in fact give us ample examples that enable us to formulate a method that avoids

mechanistic causality and historic teleology. Marx asserts, for example, that capital historically pre-supposes the existence of money, but money specifically as coin and measure not money as capital.

Money itself becomes capital (capitals proper form) only with the introduction of wage labor or

specifically with the separation of labor from the means of production. With the growing dominance

of wage labor money changes its nature as the result of the full development of capital. Capital now

becomes the pre-condition for the full development of money retroactively insofar as moneyas

capitalhenceforth appears as historically given in its full expression as immanent. Marx elaborates

this conception,

Every pre-condition of the social production process is at the same time its result, and every one of its

results appears simultaneously as its pre-condition. All of the production relations within which the

process moves are therefore just as much its products as they are its conditions. The more one

examines its nature as it really is, [the more one sees] that in the last form it becomes increasingly

consolidated, so that independently of the process these conditions appear to determine it, and their

own relations appear to those competing in the process as objective condition, as objective forces,

aspects of things, the more so as in the capitalist process, every element, even the simplest, the

commodity for example, is already an inversion, and causes relations between people to appear as

attributes of things and as relations of people to the social attributes of things. Marx, Theories of

Surplus Valuevol. 319

To conceptually exchange resultfor thepre-conditionof a process and vice-versa would not be possible

in natural science where one studies thingsand their forces independently of conscious apprehension.

These things, money for example, appear as objective forces in the capitalist process, but money is

specifically not a thing it is rather the perversion of a social relation that takes on the attribute of a

thing for consciousness. In its transformation into capital, money as a thing as coin, undergoes no

physical transformation. The change is entirely social. In fully developed capitalism money takes on

the appearance of a naturally given thing with the force of natureits fetish formalso the cause ofsocial consciousness rather than its result. Elsewhere Marx writes,

The commodities are first transformed into bars in the head and in the speech before they are

exchanges for one another. They are appraised before being exchanged. And in order to exchange

them they must be brought into a given numerical relationship to one another. In order to bring them

into such numerical relations, in order to make them commensurable, they must obtain the same

18Mechanistic Materialism (mechanistic causality) is a philosophy that masks a fundamental idealism in that meaning is

imputed onto things and phenomena prior to their actual existence. 19Marx, Theories of Surplus Valuevol 3. P 507-508 (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1972) cited in Bonefeld Capital, Laborand Primitive Accumulation. (Libcom.org)


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domination (unit). (The bar has merely an imaginary existence, just as, in general, a relation can obtain

a particular embodiment and become individualized only by means of abstraction.) 20

Now, this imaginary existencetakes on a real existence in the process ofexchange. The transformation in

the head and in speech is the pre-condition for exchangeto take place just as the act of exchange is the

precondition for the transformation of value in the head and in speech. Value itself must be formed

twice so to speak, in the head and in the speech and again in the act of exchange. What is a subjective

abstraction that appears in the imagination, takes on the force of an objective abstraction in the form of

money.21 This doubling of value is actually the transference of the valueform from the mode of

thought-consciousness to the modeof production and exchange, one that moves in both directions

synchronically. A change in one is simultaneously a change in the other provided extrinsic forces do

not disrupt the transference or the internal contradictions within the form itself do not make their

appearance. This transference of value (value itself is a differential non-substance that has no reality

outside of its effects)22 must be constantly reproduced through its modesat every moment. The failure

to make the transfer, to reproduce value socially, in thought and production/exchange, is manifest as

a crisis in capitalism.23 Reformism is precisely the reproduction of the value in its most rational form

which in effect smoothes the transference of value from the social consciousness to the act to

production and exchange. Revolutionary activity can be understood as any activity that disrupts the

transference of value from one modeto the other. The importance of this doubling of value is crucial

to understanding the transference between cause and effect in social formation and ultimately an

understanding of the possibility of revolutionary consciousness.

Classical bourgeois epistemology wavers between mechanistic materialism and idealism, which is of

course typically reproduced in traditional conceptions of Marxism. If we are to steer a path between

these isomorphic failures we need to look closely at the structure of consciousness as the locus of

Marxs educator who must himself be educated. Here language is the key; as Marx himself acknowledged

language i s practical consciousness. First and foremost we must not assume that the model of naturalscience as historically practiced is the pinnacle or standard from which the human search for truth

and revolutionary practice is to be judged.

20 Marx, Grundrissa(Penguin 1993) p 14221 For an elaboration of the concept of objective or real abstraction see Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Alberto Toscano22 Marx writes: One and the same capital can exist at one moment in the form of a sum of money, at another in the formof some raw material, of an instrument or of a finished product. These thingsare not actuallycapitalitself; capital dwells inthe valuethat they have. (original emphasis) cited in Beckhaus Between Philosophy and Science Open Marxismvol. 223 In 2002 for every dollar of goods exchanged there were 55 dollars of financial assets in circulation. Marazzi, Capital andLanguage(Semiotext(e) 2008). Eventually this imbalance of the value form over-weighted in the imaginary is unable torealize itself in the transfer to exchange/production allowing 70 billion dollars in financial assets to vanish in a singleafternoon in 2008. The transfer from one mode to another is disrupted and a crisis makes it appearance in the breach.Likewise, the appearance of unsold goods, unused production capacity, mass unemployment and marginalized employment

weighted on the side of production and exchange fails to make the necessary transfer of the value form to the imaginary. Inthese moment of crisis capital must aggressively attempt to reestablish synchronicity through destruction of labor, un-

valorized wealth, social repression, militarization and above all ideological production structured by the valueform itself.


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The Unique Character of Consciousness as Structured by Language

In 1929, V.N. Volosinov made a groundbreaking contribution to the problem of consciousness and

ideology through an analysis of language in his workMarxism and the Philosophy of Language. What

Volosinov attempted to do was provide a materialist grounding for understating consciousness that

was neither an outgrowth of linguistic formalism where language was considered a self-referential

closed system or the result of psychological essentialism where language was merely the mode to

express the inner drives of instinct. In both of these general approaches what is expressly omitted

from the explanatory theory is the socially active side of language formation and use. The formalists

conceive language as an autonomous system with its own interior logic that humans simply use or

occupy but have little direct impact on the logic itself. The psychological essentialists locate the

source of language as the expression of the individual instinctive drive that uses language to express

what was always already there within each individual. The more recent forms of de-socialized

language theory oscillate between the new wave of genetic evolutionists searching for language genes

and post-modernist discourse theorists who give autonomy to discursive structures that are

themselves responsible for the formation of reality itself: everything is discourse. What all of these

approaches have in common is the reduction or even the expulsion of the social influence on

linguistic praxis as a dialectical self-positing in a context of historically conditioned conflict.

Volosinov makes the following assertions in his analysis:

Signs form the primary structure consciousness in sign systems and the ideal sign forconsciousness is the word.

Signs are material entities (sound, the written word, visual images) and as such are subject toproduction, distribution and accumulation, which always take place within the context ofhistorically conditioned social conflict.

The origin of signs is social and thus external to individual consciousness of which it isconstitutive, that is, individual consciousness itself has it origins outside of the individual inthe social sphere

Signs have a dual nature: they are one with themselves as objects/sounds etc. and theyrefract a reality outside of themselves in and for consciousness. Sign meanings are not fixed in relation to that which is signified, as signs they must always be

reproduced in consciousness in a context of conflict

Because their dual nature, signs are characterized by an essential instability that is producedby the socio-historical context

Signs are a critical point of conflict in class struggle and simultaneously refract the meaningof that self-same conflict for consciousness.


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The value of these assertions is precisely what will allow us to unravel the mystery of class-

consciousness, or rather to demystify it. There is all too often a tendency to equate class-

consciousness, even if not explicitly, with Hegels Geist (Spirit) as though class-consciousness is the

materialist inversion of the idealist Geist. But most every concept variant of class-consciousness,

collective-consciousness, imputed-consciousness etc has a distinctly idealist odor about it. It appears

to be Hegels objective idealism by another name. The consciousness of the proletariat, it is claimed,

is the self-consciousness of humanity coming to its concept. This formulation and many similar

formulations, have not only an idealist air but also a distinct teleology. Teleology itself is most

typically the outcome of an imputed necessity: the essence of Geist or the essence of class-

consciousness as the outcome of historical necessity. 24 The only outcome of this idealist framework

is to return to a mechanistic causality, thus, in the final analysis, the only way social necessity as

essence can be posited is to subsume social contingency into a procedural necessity as though it was

identical to the natural sciences, thus outside of intention.25 Volosinov, on the other hand, provides us

with the possibility of a materialist phenomenology of consciousness that will enable us to account

for the self-positing nature of human practice as a necessity.

To begin with, consciousness is a phenomenon that resides in the individual thought processes via

the circulation of signs, as they reconfigure the organisms sensual experience in thought, but not

only. The important point is that class-consciousness, proletarian-consciousness, revolutionary-

consciousness, or a collective-consciousness of any kind cannot exist as a thing, and there is no

location of a presumed collective-consciousness. Collective-consciousness can only be conceived as

the communicative link in human praxisproduction, distribution, accumulation, and consumption

of signsbetween individuals and groups of individuals. Individual consciousness exists in the mind,

specifically through the refracted meaning of signs; whereas collective consciousness exists in the

material production of signs themselves, external to individual thought. Any attempt to give it a

metaphysical quality as super-consciousness will return us to the idealism of the Geist. 26 The basic

unit of this communicative praxis is the word , which has a material presence external to thought yet

24 This is not to suggest that there is no room for the concept of teleology in history, but it must be a teleology that emergesfrom the contingent self-positing praxis of social man. See Lukacs Ontology.

26 Postone asserts that the proper substitution of the Hegelian Geistin Marxs Capitalis capital itself and not labor as is oftenunderstood. The immanence of Capital is the self-valorizing imperative nature of value in motion. While this is an importantadvance over traditional forms of Marxism, Postone subtly and not so subtly ends in removing human agency and positsthe complete autonomy of capital as an immanent historical force. He even writes: Both the proletariat and the capitalistclass are bound to capital, but the former is more so: capital conceivably could exist without capitalists, but it could not exist

without value-creating labor. (my emphasis) p. 357 Marx anticipate just such a formulation when he makes clear, Butcapital in its being-for-itself is the capitalist. Of course, socialists sometimes say, we need capital, but not the capitalist. Thencapital appears as a pure thing, not as a relation of production which, reflected in itself, is precisely the capitalist. I may wellseparate capital from a given individual capitalist, and it can be transferred to another. But, in losing capital, he loses thequality of being a capitalist. Thus capital is indeed separable from individual capitalist, but not from thecapitalist who, assuch, confronts the worker. (Original emphasis) Marx Grundrissa p 303. Postones contribution to understanding the

importance of abstract labor as intrinsic to capital is of foundational importance but in the end he comes dangerously closeto formulating Marxism as a science of the object, even if in his conception the object is the categorical abstraction ofCapital as immanent object.


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social and the self-positing character of humanity in such a way that man can become the cause of his

own cause or the educator who must be educated.31 To approach this formulation, how this schema may

help to disentangle a very complex knot, we should apply the concept immediately as a critique.

The Endless Confusion of Ideology

The concept of ideology is one of the most abused concepts in the whole corpus of marxology. In

essence, it can mean whatever one wants it to mean at any given moment and can be used to

bludgeon ones enemies at any given turn; the Gulag was full of ideological deviants! It is a useless

form of a concept unless it can be distinguished from its non-form. Without laying out the complex

history of the concept as it evolved from its positive connotation in the 18 th century to the negative

one that Marx and Engels bequeathed to it, suffice it to summarize that it is typically understood as a

set of ideas that hide reality, mystifies it and distorts it for the purposes of class domination. But what is it? As a form it can not be distinguished from Marxist theory itself, it can really only be

claimed that its mystifying properties reside exclusively in the content of its conclusions, and in the

final analysis, we must ask, how can one judge the correct content other than from the barrel of a

rifle,32 if, as we have asserted, that in its structure it has no inherent self-correcting mechanism as in

natural science?33 Volshinov helps here by asserting that ideology is above all a system of signs that

has a material form: words, images, sounds etc. It is a form of consciousness structured by signs that

emerges from social conflict as lived experience. There can be many competing systems of signs, each

attempting to explain the total ensemble of experience as it is symbolically structured and experiencedas the unnamed real.34 But in essence one ideology is as good as another if it succeeds, that is if it

adequately explains for the existing symbolic experience and accounts for the unnamed real of

experience. What any ideology must do to succeed is to formulate a symbolic generality in which all

individual cases can be accounted for and it must account for, or at least not contradict, the law-like

procedures that enable the reproduction of the species. The mechanism for the domination of one

ideology over another is manifold but must first account for the material production and circulation

30

Schiller once wrote: all that a man can think belongs to the whole of humanity; all that a man can feel belongs to him alone. He appearsto have understood the oscillation between social nature of knowledge (symbolic) and the individual nature of totalexperience as expressed non-symbolically in the body (the unnamed real).31 I would speculate that this division between real, symbolic, and imaginaryand the material imaginationis not adequate whenaccounting for mathematics and perhaps not for music where all four modes are identical or nearly identical.32 As superficially horrifying as this idea is, it contains an essential truth. In the final analysis, within limits, the truth of anideology is a question of power. If the question could be posed, no dispassionate scientist would be able to say which istrue, bourgeois ideology or proletarian ideology. Each is true for its class.33 In the Platform of the International Communist Current we can read the following: only marxism is capable of graspingsocial reality in an objective and scientific manner, without any prejudices or mystifications of any sort. [sic] But of course there is nomention of how it grasps this reality without any prejudice other than the trite reference to historical analysis andmaterialism but I would ask an even more important question, why does it want to? Arent we deeply prejudiced?Otherwise we really dont need revolutionaries we need dispassionate research scientists! Or perhaps just damn goodcomputer programs. The ICC is a typical example of the marxology that simply asserts that its own version of Marxism isscience and everything is ideology. It is as sickening as it is dangerous!32Harry Cleaver makes this same point when he writes: relative surplus value and the theory of optimal factor pricing thusexpress two different class perspectives on exactly the same phenomenon in his essay The Inversion of ClassPerspective Open Marxism vol II p 108.


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of signs, and here the power of Capital over Labor is obvious. But, what is important is that the

forms of the ideology are indistinguishable to consciousness, consciousness itself is structured by the

integration of the symbolic quality of experiencethe disembodied chairand the Unnamed Real

experience of sitting on a chair for instance, in the specifically unique context. There is no

unprejudiced real, no truth, no false and no mystification, water will boil just the same. The problem

in the final analysis, for any ideology, appears when the ideology itself becomes so detached from the

structure of theprocedural realand the unnamed realexperience as to insist that the water wont boil and

yet it does! All experience resides in the interstices between the Realand the Symbolic. However, it is

the third category that creates problems and possibilities for the domination of ideology, the

Imaginary. It is the Imaginary that must integrate the two previous modes. It is in the Imaginarythat the

breech is open so to speak; it is here that ideology can ultimately fail its task of domination or

succeed in revolutionizing consciousness. By living through symbolically structured experience man is

constituted from birth as an ideological subject but can never escape the persistent reverberations of

the unnamed real; it is in the un-ruled, insubordinate, and unpredictable Imaginarythat revolutionary

praxis is spawned.

Every individual has his own experience that is entirely unique to himself but he has this experience

in a context of shared social activity and shared language thus obviously a shared ideology that is

capable of explaining this experience. However, since every sign refracts a meaning outside of itself

in consciousness and every consciousness if composed of the unique convergence between the Real

and the Symbolicit is clear that every consciousness must reconstruct the symbolic in unique ways thus

providing the basic architecture of conscious experience. The Imaginaryis working whenever there is

the consciousness of an experience. Individual signs shift meanings constantly depending on the

social context or the intersection of competing sign systems. What is essential is that the material

sign embodied in social production is reconfigured as a sign when disembodied in thought. That is it

shifts the material significance of the sign and becomes a source of a newImaginaryin consciousness

retroactively. Moreover, when the Imaginary is objectifieda new chair or new theory or piece of

musicit joins the historical accumulation and development of theMaterial Imaginationthat produces

a new level of experience, an experience that socially alters the Unnamed Real and the Symbolic

simultaneously.35Here we see the possibility of a causal reversal. That which was once experienced in

one way is now experienced in another due to its displacement in the system of signs both materially

and for consciousness; effect become cause via the mediation of the Imaginaryas it appears objectively

in the Material Imagination. By reordering the Symbolic, both objectively and subjectively, man can

reconfigure the structure of his own experience, that which was once his own cause now becomes his

effect, but of course always within the limits of the procedural necessity. Nevertheless, the linearity of the

35 Lacan himself defines this process as Praxis. What is praxis. It is the broadest term for designating a concerted actionof whatever kind by man, that enables him to change the real via the symbolic. (J. Lacan Seminar XI ) cited in Fink.


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causal is disrupted in consciousness and man is no longer pure effect. Revolutionary

consciousnessthe subject of this critiqueemerges when self-positing becomes social and can

actualize itself purposively in its material immediacy in such a way that breaks the causal chain. 36

Summary & Provisional Implications

Marxism is a reflexive self-positing praxis. When we assert that Marxism is a reflexive theory of

social movement, we also mean that reflexivity is a praxis that is expressed materially and not merely

in thought (analysis). In this sense, Marxism distills self-consciously what humanity does historically

in its own social self-positing. But, it is also an ideology in so far as any ideology is defined as an

ensemble of ideas that situate social man existentially in time, in space and in nature. Man is

constituted as man ideologically from birth and therefore always lives between the ideally structured

reality of the symbolic in consciousness and his procedural activity that mediates his reproduction in

nature. Ideology is not a falsification of reality that can be opposed to the rational, scientific, truthful

apprehension of reality, if that reality is conceived as a thing outside of the self. It is better

understood as the structure of conscious being as it is socially constituted; it is mans continual effort

to reconcile himself with himself and nature and is therefore full of conflict and contradictions. In

mans effort to apprehend truth he must posit himself in truth and this takes many forms: political

theory, science, poetry, art, music etc. It should be clear however, that self-positing man is full of

prejudice and subjective desires, quite the contrary of the dispassionate scientist who would claim

that objective laws present themselves to man from the facts of history. This presumed objective

stance could only be conceived as anti-Marxist and anti-revolutionary precisely because it removes

the specifically revolutionary character of its praxis, turning that which appears external to man,

though in fact produced by manhistoryinto the source of scientific law to which man must

subordinate his willfetishism. What Marxism posits above all is that man is onto-formative. It is this

singular distinction that makes Marxism potentially revolutionary. Revolutionary Marxism must

recognize that man becomes revolutionary subjectively, sensually and practically, not merely analytically.

The hothouse for revolutionary praxis is mans imagination. It is in the imagination where the onto-

formativepraxis begins. Marxism itself cannot uncover the laws of the imagination, as the imagination

will always slip between the fingers of the structures imposed by the symbolic, in fact it is the

instability of the symbolic itself that permits the imagination to reach beyond any law-like

formulation. However, the ground can be cleared for the imaginary by specifically critiquing all

ideologies that suggest a fetishistic orientation towards social reality.

36It well could be that music itself is a better model than natural science for conceptualizing revolutionary practice wherethe imaginary, the symbolic, and the unnamed realcome together as entirely united and indistinguishable from its objectiverealization in theMaterial Imagination.


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Marxs principle work was the critique of political economy as a bourgeois science, a science that

specificallyfetishised economic categories as given, as the material reality from which culture arose.

Marxs critique was primarily aimed at animating the self-conscious onto-formative character of social

man by clearing the ground of capitalist ideology that continually reduces man to a mere object of

historical forces. To the extent that the categories of economic science are understood as the objects

that form man, we are in the world of man as the fetish object of his own creation. But economic

activity and economic theory is one way of apprehending reality not the only. 37

Poetry [for example] is not a reality of a lower order than is economics. It is an equally human reality,

though of a different type and different form, with a different mission and significance. Economics

does not beget poetry, directly or indirectly, mediately or immediately. Rather, man forms both

economics and poetry as artifacts of human praxis. Materialist philosophy cannot buttress poetry with

economics. Nor can it grab economics as the one and only reality into assorted less real or almostimaginary disguises such as politics, philosophy or art. Instead it has to ask the primary question about

the origin of economics itself. He who takes economics as given and further irreducible, as the

ultimately original source of everything and the only real reality which cannot be questioned further,

transforms economics into a result, a thing, an autonomous historical factor, and fetishises it in the

process. Modern materialism is therefore a radical philosophy because it does not treat mans artifacts

as the limit of analysis but penetrates to the roots of social reality, i.e. to man as the objective subject,

to man as the being theformssocial reality. KosikThe Dialectic of the Concrete.

It is the self-positing nature of man and this alone that makes him potentially revolutionary; it is the

onto-formative side of man that must be the center of all critique, of all organization and of all activity

for revolutionaries. The work of Marx and Engels, and subsequent revolutionaries, is not much

different from the work of the radicals of the Renaissance when they placed man the makerat the

center of their implied critique of the dominant ideology, religion. 38 The superiority of Marxism to

science is precisely that it reveals the mechanism and the potential of creating reality and not merely

analyzing the mechanistic laws of the procedural. Eventually science will take it rightful place as an

ancillary tool/activity to the self-positing of the human specie.

Man posits his own existence and then seeks the means to overcome all obstacles to his goals

through his praxis. Mans self-positing is the necessary condition of the species but under the

37 It is a futile exercise to attempt to formulate a Marxist theory of art for example, or music, or sport, etc. Marxism can onlyadequately theorize about such categories insofar as they come under the sway of the value-form of social relations and notas autonomous trans-historical spheres of social reality in themselves. The categories of Marxist theory are the result of thestruggles within the value-form as capital seeks to realize itself in social relations. Such attempts to apply Marxist categoriesto all historical forms of social reality merely buttresses totalitarian thought.38 During the Renaissance, creating and working were still unified and humanism itself was born with theassertion/recognition that man was self-forming. Pico alluded to mans superiority to the angels on the basis of his self-

forming activity. G. Manetti 1532 could write: All that surround us is our own work, the work of men: all of the houses,places, cities and marvelous buildings all over the countryside seeing such marvels we understand that we can create evenbetter, more beautiful, more refined, more perfect things than hitherto cited in Kosik.


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conditions of capitalism he confronts a profoundlyfetishizedalienated society in which he experiences

himself as mere object. But he asserts himself time and again with an irrepressible, sometimes mad

refusal that resounds in a universal yes. He is able to conceive of a non-alienated life, because the

antithesis of this society is contained within it, revealed through the crack and fissures of its self-

generated contradictions. In this sense Marxs communist man has more in common with

Nietzsches bermensch than with all of the social scientist of the last 200 years. Both seek self-

realization through the openings and cracks that appear as possibilities. Both are self-creating men,

unbound by the alienated instrumentalist demands of technocratic ends, self-negating men who live

across the endless oscillations of self-overcoming and reflexive self-positing. The essential difference

is that Nietzsches man is supra-historical and alone in the world; unable to account for the reality of

the historically contingent and the fundamentally social nature of self-creation, the bermensch is an

elitist. Both seek more life than this life gives but Nietzsche must retreat into his solitude finding

meaning in personal power. Communist man shares the bermenschesdrive for more life but finds its

affirmation in communion where he joyfully recognizes himself reflected in the eyes of another.

Are you finished?

NearlyAnd where are you?

At the end.But this looks just like the beginning!

Shall I start over?

B. York02/15/2009

Sources

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vol.2 (Pluto 1992)

Fink, Bruce The Lacanan Subject(Princeton 1995) Gunn, Richard Against Historical Materialism in Bonefeld, Gunn, Psychopedis, Open Marxismvol.2

(Pluto 1992)

Kitching GavinMarxism and Science(Penn State 1994) Kosik, Karel The Dialectic of the Concrete(Reidel 1967) Marazzi, Christian Capital and Language(Semiotext(e) 2008) Marx, Karl and Engles, F. The German Ideology(Prometheus 1998) Marx, Karl Capitalvol.1. (Penguin 1976) Marx, Karl Grundrissa(Penguin 1993)


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Postone, Moishe Time, Labor and Social Domination(Cambridge 2003) Sohn-Rethel, Alfred Intellectual and Manual Labor, A Critique of Epistemology(Macmillan, 1976) Toscano, Alberto Real Abstraction Revisited (internet), The Culture of Abstraction inTheory,

Culture and Society2008; 25;57

Voloshinov, V.Marxism and the Philosophy of Language(Harvard 1986)

Documents

The Material Imagination as Self-Positing Praxis