Date: Tue, 30 Apr 1996 22:31:06 -0800
Subject: Re: entropy and evolution


>Vladimir, I'm interested.  Ilyenkov, entropy, historical materialism and
>dialectics of nature?  Could you or somebody give us a summary of Ilyenkov's
>views or some part of them?
>Thanks

I was just reading a couple of nights ago David Backhurst's *Consciousness
and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy: From the Bolsheviks to Evald
Ilynekov*. Cambridge University Press, 1991. 

Nothing on entropy (has anyone read GN Alekseev Energy and Entropy, by the
way?) 

I turned to Backhurst because I was trying to understand the logical
movement in Marx's *Capital*.  I read the chapter which deals with
Ilyenkov's Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in Marx's Capital.  

The rest of this post has nothing to do with the questions above.  

Here is an important problem.  Marx does not present individual capitals as
they appear on the surface of bourgeois society until the third volume. In
the first volume it has been argued that he is  interested to analyze 

a)the general productive relation between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat, *abstracted* from the competition among both firms and workers
as it appears on the surface of society. So when Marx conducts his analysis
of a single capital, he is abstracting from all features but the class
relation.  

b)  how the total mass of surplus value is produced, before Marx analyzes
how it is distributed in the process of competition and the average rate of
profit formed thereby.  Fred Moseley has developed this into what he has
called the macro interpretation (see Summer 1995 *Capital and Class*) 

But this said, there is an obvious problem.  Marx does analyze a single
capital in the first two volumes, but it is not until the third volume
after he has already determined the total mass of surplus value that he
introduces the realm of competition in which the total mass of surplus
value is distributed among  capitals.  So the capital Marx analyzes
previously must be abstracted from the concrete forms it takes on the
surface of society.  

What is the nature of the method of abstraction by which Marx can study
capital in order to approach the concrete? How does Marx decide what to
abstract from? What is the nature of the knowledge gained by this method of
abstraction? 

This is not the only or even main problem in logical presentation which Ilyenkov
discussed.  More important for Ilynekov (according to Backhurst) was the
logic Marx used in order to analyze the value form; no less important (as
the chapter seems to suggest) is Ilyenkov's analysis of how logical
presentation develops out of contradictions at a previous level of
analysis.  

All very heady stuff, but the more it becomes clear that Marx's *Capital*
remains the most powerful available critical theory we have, the more I
think many of us will want to really dig to its roots and its logic.

Felton Shortall and Tony Smith are two more contemporary authors who are
also going to the foundations.  The volume Fred Moseley edited also
includes essays which are relevant. 

Here is Shortall's discussion of the problem:

Shortall brilliantly demonstrates how the Hegelian doctrine of the Notion
is at the root of Marx's analysis of capital in its different moments. That
is, he demonstrates the importance of the Hegelian conceptions of
universality, particularity and individuality to Marx's theory of capital.
"'Capital-in-general' therefore refers to what particular capitals
NECESSARILY have in common; that which characterizes every particular
capital as capital.  Furthermore, 'capital-in-general' must be shown to be
self-particularizing; that is, it must be shown hown 'capital-in-general'
subsists within its particular forms and within individual capitals." (445)


Continuining this analysis, Shortall writes:

"Marx's conception of the individual capital with which he begins his
theory of profit at the beginning of Volume III is no longer the same as it
was during exposition of the theory of surplus value in Volume I.  There
the individual capital was only considered insofar as it was stripped of
its particularity.  It stood as immediate representative of all capitals,
as the abstract generality of capital as such.  Consequently, the
individual capital could be taken as a simple microcosm of the totality of
social capital, its direct and immediate individual embodiment.  But now at
the beginning of Volume III, the individual capital can no longer be
considered as the immediate representative of all other capitals, nor of
the totality of social capital.  While the overall continuity of the
movement of an individual circuit of capital has served to resolve the
particularization of capital within the singularity of an individual
capital, this particularization is still preserved within this singularity.
 The individual capital now stands as a particular individual capital; an
individual capital amongst many other such capitals. So implicit within the
singularity of the individual capital, which serves to open VOl III and
Marx's theory of profit, is the multiciplity of such individual capitals. 
An implication that soon becomes explicit in Marx's exposition of his
theory of the transformation of surplus value into profit." (452)   



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