Smith (2009) Marxism and Dialectical Monism

8/13/2019 Smith (2009) Marxism and Dialectical Monism

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ciencef Society, Vol. 7.S, No. 3,July 200 9, 3 56-.S85

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Dualism: Marxism and the N ecessityof Dialectical MonismMURRAY E G SMITH

BSIU CT The controversy surr ound ing the stattis of dialecticsin Marxist thotight has failed to take the ftill measure of the per-sistent infltience of ontological dtiahsm and its corollaiy, dtiahs-tic social ontolog )'. Yet an exphcit c ritique of duahsm is essentialto materialist dialectics and to a Marxist-socialist theory andpedagogy that discloses the specific role of capitalist social rela-tions in im peding h uman progress.Adialectical-monistic ontol-ogyassociated with Marx's new (historical) materialism reqttiressystematic conceptual elaboration,asilltiminatedby ad ialectical-ontological triad embracing the nattiral, the social and con-scious activity. The useftilness of this triad is illustrated byexploring how dialectical-monistic and dtialistic ontologiesstimulate very different ways of understanding a key qtiestionin social theoiy: the concept of economic valtie.

NTRODUCING A SPECIAL ISSUE OF cience ocietydevolvedto Dialectics: Th e New Fro ntier a decade ago, Bertell Oilmanand Tony Smith wrote: There are serious limits to how dialecti-cal our thinking can become in capitalist society. With its frequentupheavals of all k inds, no society requ ires dialectics as m uch , but it isalso true that with its reified social forms and constantly expandingconsciousness industiy, no society makes it so difficult for its inhab-itants to think dialectically (1998, 335). It is, of conrse, a com mon-


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mechanical ways of seeing things that are so pervasive in capitalistsociety. What often receives insufficient attention, however, is thenecessary connection between epistemological commitments andontological ones. For the m ethods and theoretical strategies that weuse to understand the world are shaped in good part by our tacitassumptions concern ingitsunderlying reality its ontological struc-ture ; and these assumptions in turn are heavily influenced by the social being tha t Marx says determines consciousness.

This essay explores one aspect of the problem to which Oilmanand Smith a llude: the persistent influence ofontological dualismwithincapitalist society, and the challenge that materialist dialectics, con-ceived as amonistic L\termmeat the level of social ontology, pose tothe ideologically dominant that is, dualistic ways in which so-cial reality and human problems are apprehended, framed and ana-lyzed. Ontological dualismisunderstood here as a metaphysical worldview tha t conceives of realityasdivided into two substantially opposedand estranged spheres: the natural and the supernatu ral; the physi-cal and the mental; the material and the ideal.

Following a brief discussion of the place of dialectics in Marx-ism, the essay surveys the sources of dualistic thinking and some ofits expressions in m odern social theory. Thisisfollowed by an exam i-nation of Marx's materialist conception of history and its basis in amonistic ontology that encompasses three dialectically interpene-trated aspects or flelds: the na tura l, the social and conscious activity.The idea of a historical-materialist system of dialectical triads is thenproposed, and the usefulness of this system is illustrated through abrief survey of competing concepts of economic value. arxism and theControversySurroundingDialectics

Two broad positions are discernible among M arxists who affirmthe im portance of dialectics to Marxist thou gh t.' The flrst, traditionalposition is that dialectics is a set of methodological principles forgrasping the interconnections of the various aspects and elements ofreality, their mutual relations, and the contradictions within and among


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358 SGIENGE fSOGIETYOilman, 2003). On this view, dialectic as method is deemed neces-sary because the reality that it helps to explain and to understand isitself dialectical in its ontological structure. Engels (1954, 83) cap-tures this traditional M arxist conception of the "internal" con nec tionbetween dialectical reason and a dialectical realitywithhis " three lawsof the d ialectic": the unity of opposites (eveiy concrete totality com-prises contradictor)' elements), the transformation of quantity iiitoquality (changes in degree eventuate in changes in type), and thenegation of the negation (the clash of contradictory elements pro-duces changes that both presen'e and radically transform them ). ForEngels, as for most defenders of materialist dialectics, these laws findapplication in the analysis of na ture and society alike (Novack, 19,78;Foster, 2000).

The second broad position is that dialectic can refer only to theinterplay of a subject and an object. Where human consciousness orsubjectivity is absent, there can be relations of causality but no trulydialectical relations. On thisview,dialectic ison y m ethod (of a con-scious subject), and ontological dialectics (whether in its idealist-Hegelian oritsmaterialist-Engelsian guise)is avariety of "metaphysics"that Marxists ough t to avoid. Thus, Engels' elaboration of a "dialecticsof nature" is dismissed as spurious, while Mai"x's more modest focuson "human society"isapplauded as the appropriate frame of referencefor a dialectical theoiy (Lukcs, 1970; Schmidt, 1971).For his part, Marx insisted that a vast gulf separated the idealistdialectical method of Hegel from his own materialist dialectic, butthatit wasnecessaiy to discover the "rational kern el" within the "mys-tical shell" of the Hegelian system 1977,103).- But in what does tJiatrational kernel consist? Am ong co ntem po rary Marxists the re is anotable lack of consensus, bu t a list ofitspossible constituents wouldinclude Engels' threelaws,a philosophy of internal relations (Oilman,1976), and a commitment to the systematic dialectical ordering ofconcepts (Smith, 1990; Arth ur, 1998). IWhat is often absent from the debates between (and within) thetwo camps identified above is the recognition that the questiori of2 In llie 1873 Poslfacc lo llie sec on d editio n of Ctipitat Marx w rote: "iMy dialectical m eth od


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dialectic cannot be separated from two critically important philo-sophical issues confronting a truly emancipatory social science: thedefense of realism in epistemology (the theory of knowledge) andthe defense of monism in ontology (the theory of be ing/wha t exists).Sayers (1985) has addressed the first issue adm irablybyshowing howa dialectical approach can break through the dualistic, anti-realisttendencies in the theo iy of knowledge and overcome their d isorient-ing and paralyzing implications for hum an practice. The arg um ent Iwish to make is in many respects parallel and complementaiy to thatof Sayers. If dialectic is essential to the defense of realism within epis-temology (thatis,to the potential identityor isomorphism oftho ug ht and reality), it is no less essential to the defense of monismwithin ontology. And the defense of monism is anecessityfortheverygood reason that monism is the only effective antidote to the onto-logical dualism that pei-vades the culture of bourgeois society andobscures the roots of human misery in the prevailing social relationsof production and rep rod uc tion . If the critique of religion is thebeginning of all criticism, as Marx famously argued, itisno less truethat the critique of dualism is an urgent task of con tem porain Marx-ist criticism.

Once dualism is consciously rejected and the necessity of dialecti-cal monismisgrasped, it becomes much easier to navigate the contro-versy surrounding dialectics in Marxist thought. Proponents of the subject-object dialectic who reject ontological dialectics (and ,muta-tismutandis the dialectics of nature ) can be seen as falling victimto a dualism of human and natural worlds. Against such dualism,defenders of the materialist dialectic must insist that the human andnatural realms share amateriallygrounded if also internally differen-tiated and contradictoiy, reality, and are better viewed as relativelydistinctthan sabsolutely different. While the hum an realmisfar morecomplex than the natural one, dialectical principles are an indispens-able aid to understanding both in anti-metaphysical (that is to say,non-dualistic) ways.DualisticSocial ntology versusMarxism


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ity production and exchange, which has become a generalized phe-nomenon with the consolidation of capitalism as the globally domi-nant m ode of production; and, mostrecently,the functional imperativeof capitalist society to create a relatively free space for the progressof m odern science (as the indispensable means of raising labor pro-ductivity and fu rthering capital accum ulation ), while also p reservinga role for religion and superstition in pacifying the subaltern classesand countering the infiuence of emancipatory trends in the socialsciences, above all Marxism.

Fu ndam enta l to a Marxist, historical-materialist critique of dual-ism is an insistence on the role of the social relations of production(and reproduction) in mediating the dynamic relationship betweenthe m aterial-natural (encompassing hum an corporeal organiza-tion, the forces of produc tion and the invariant laws of na ture ) andhuman conscious activity (encompassing ideas and agency) . On thisview, the social is not immediately reducible to either the materialor the ideal (as in dualistic thought), but plays a relatively autono-mous role within an ontological unity. Thus, Marxism rejects anysupposition of principled indeterminacy in the relationship betweenthe material-natura l and hum an consciousness/activity, positing eachas relatively distinct aspects or m om ents of a dialectical unity in whichthe social plays a significant determiningroXeDualism in Modem hilosophy andSocial Theory

Dualism emerged as the dominant perspective of early modernEuropean intellectuals under the infiuence of Descartes' mind-bodydualism and Locke's dualism of external objects and ideas. To besure, some En lightenm ent thinkers cham pioned a vigorously m ateri-alist (and more orlessexplicitly atheist) position, while the rationalis tphilosopher Spinoza defended an elaborate pantheistic (and perhapssurreptitiously m aterialist) monism as against Descartes. But most Ageof Reason and Enligh tenm ent philosophers adop ted a dualistic po-sition, with some emphasizing material factors and others the ideal.3 Acomment on ihe way the concepts of mediation and reproduction are understood and


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362 SCIENCE =SOCIET'Propelled by the capitalist drive for scientiflc innovation and by theintellectual revolt against religious dogma, the modern era saw thegradual displacement of traditional, religiously grounded idealismby dualism, and the burgeoning influence of dualistic perspectiveswithin the wider culture.Imm anuel Kant's philosophy represen ted the culmination of thistrend in early mode rn philosophy and social theory. Kant defendedthe view that the hviman mind can know phe no m ena (sense experi-ence as categorized and o rganized by the mind) but not things inthemselves, and tha t reality, from the stan dpoin t of hum an con-sciousness, is riven between whatis and what ought to be. DespiteKant's declared intent, the result of his epistemological assault ontraditional ontologywasa dualistic m etaphysics: a speculative divisionof reality into material-natural and ideal-spiritual worlds, the formerconceived as subject to deterministic physical laws and the latter to free will. Science and religious faith were understood to be the le-gitimate concerns of two different types of human reason: sciencewith whatis as conceptualized by pure reason, and religion with what ought to be those transcend ent spiritual goals and moralprecep ts that are divinely inscribed in the human mind and that arethe intuitive preoccupations of practical reason.

Kant's dualism met with considerable resistance from the ideal-ist and materialist philosophers of the 19th century, but by centuiy'send it had established a growing following among social theorists andphilosophers alike, particularly in continental Europe. In Germany,

a Kantian revival, led by Rickert and Windelband, eclipsed Hegel'sabsolute idealism and challenged the growing influence of a decid-edly mechanistic understanding of Marx's materialism in the era of theSecond International. The neo-Kantians insisted upon a radical sepa-ration of facts and values in what they called the human or culturalsciences an opinion which exerted a particularly strong influenceon Max Weber, whose methodological principles and dualistic socialontology were to leave a lasting imprint upon European and Anglo-AjTierican social theory (Weber, 1949; Therborn, 1980).Weber may be seen as providing a dualistic template for an in-


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acterist ic preoccupations of modern social theoiy (capitalism, socialconflict, inequality, rationality, com m unity ) by effacing the de term i-nat ive role of historical ly specific social re lat ions of product ion/rep rod uc t ion and by reinstat ing a metaphysical inde term inacy as be-tween the material -natural and the ideal-cul tural . This is perhapsbest exemplif ied by his famous thesis co nc ern ing the ind ep en de ntcon tribu t ion of Pro testant theological and ethical ideas to the em er-gen ce of rational asceticism the spirit of capitalism an d thusto the r ise of the modern capi tal is t economic order, a l though hisdualist ic perspective is no less evident in his theories of dominationand the distribution of power within society (Weber, 1958; 1978).W ithin th e rising aca dem ic discipline of sociology in 20th-centui'yEu rop e an d America, W eber 's thesisw swidely hailed by non-M arxistsas a devastating blow to whatw soften described as M arx's econ om icinte rpr eta tion of history. Yet, an alternative, historical-materialist ac-count of the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism hadalread y be en offered by Eng eis in 1892: Ca lvin's cr ee d was o n e fit forthe boldest of the bourgeoisie of his t ime. His predestination doc-trine was the religious expression of the fact that in the commercialworld of com petit ion success or failure does not dep en d u po n a m an 'sactivity or cleverness, bu t up on circum stances u nco ntro llable by him(1970 [1892], 104). From Engels ' perspect ive, Calvinist and otherProtestant ideas were not an independent force in s t imulat ing the spiri t of capitalism bu t ra th er a pr od uc t of, an d rein fo rce m en t to,the process of transit ion to the modern, capitalist order a processthat had beg un with the prior em erg en ce of a com m erciai worid ofcom petit ion. T he m ateriai and social cond itions of this com m ercialwo rid, Engeis suggested, w ere todecis\\ e]ymedi tethe re ia do ns hi p iDe-tween the sprea d of Pro testan t ideas (sucii as pre des tination an d thework ethic ) an d the rise of wh at W ebe r called m od ern capitalism.

Agains t such a d ia lec t ica l approach , Weber conceived humansocial action, anci the institutions to which it gives rise, as the prod-uct of two ontologicaiiy independent sets of factors: on the one side,naturai iaws and teclinicai necessity (tiie concerns of formai rationai-ity) and, on the otiier, the spiritual and etiiical orientations of iiuman


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364 SCIENCE =SOCIETYspiritual domain. Accordingly, Weber's dualism allows a significantrole for mystical (spiritual or supernatural) factors in human affaii-s,even though it is not motivated by anyexpli itreligious purpose.More recently, Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's much-celebrated attempt to combine a post-Marxist understanding o econom ic postmodernization with Michel Foticault's concept ofbio-politics (Hardt and Negri, 2000; 2004) has provided a striking con-tem pora ry exam ple of dualistic think ing in po stm od ern socialtheory, one relevant to the discussion of econom ic value later in thisessay. H ard t and Negri argue that two developm ents have com binedto explode the value form that Marx analyzed inCapital therebynegating the law of (labor) value as the pre-em inent regulatory prin-ciple of postm odern capitalism. On the on e han d, imm ateriallabor (essentially, intellectual and service-producing labor) has pte-vailed over ma terial labor (the industrial labor that pro du cesmaterial goods ) owing to the increasingly dominant role played byscience and technology in the productive metabolism with naturie.On the oth er hand , capital subsumes un de r its contro l no t onlylabor and the productive process in gene ral, butalsothe biopoliticsof social reproduction (education, com m unication, sexuality, and soon) .Marx's capitalist law of value according to which new value iscreated solelybyliving labor and exists as a definite quantitative mag-nitude tha t sets limits on wages, prices and profits (Smith, 1994a) is replaced by a vague no tion ofvalueas determ ined by hum anity'sown continuotis innovation and creation (2000, 356).

In making their argumen t, Ha rdt and N egri succumb to the capitalfetishismengend ered by what Marx called the real subsum ptionof labor un der capital and by the ever-increasing role of science andtechnology in modern capitalism (Marx, 1977, Appendix). At bot-tom, capital fetishism (like commodity fetishism) involves the confu-sion and conflation of the natural and the social in the hum an mind,and the concom itant failure to recognize that the production of valueand surplus value under capitalism remains decisively dependeritupon the exploitation of wage labor, however technologically sophis-ticated the productive metabolism with nature may become. Such


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wage labor relation , and no t to the creation of wealth as such or tothe developm ent of the inde pen den t powers of technology.Hard t's and N egri's capital fetishism attests to the residual influ-ence of dualistic metaphysics in their thinking, despite their rejec-tion of the great Western metaphysical tradition (2000, 355) forthe inescapable result of their effective conflation of the material-natural and the social dimensions of capitalist produ ction is the re-instatement of the material-ideal opposition that is the hallmark ofdtialistic thinking. By herald ing the dom inance of so-called imma-terial labor over material labor in postmodern capitalism, H ard t

and Negri not only oppose, in dualistic fashion, types of labor with intellectual and affective functions to those more m un da ne typesthat create material goods; they also imply that capital has won itsindependence from the livingl bor that Marx identifies as the solesourceofneivvalue Thus, Hardt and Negri transform value, conceivedby Marx as both a social relation and a definite quantitative magni-tude specific to capitalism, into a transhistorical, immeasurable qual-ity and product of the hu m an intellec t. Yet, as David Camfieldobserves in a searching critique, their argum ent depe nds on both afaulty premise and theoretical confusion about the relationship be-tween concrete labor, abstract labor and value, and fails to offerany compelling reason to question the belief that value continues toregulate the global economy (2007, 47).

Notwithstanding their diversity, dualist critics of Marxism areremarkably united in their insistence that Marxism misses some-thing of great im portance to hum an social life, wh ether defined asthe independent role ofideas in history (Weber), the con tributionof science and technology to creating value (Ha rdt and Neg ri), biopolitics (Foucault), com munication (Haberm as), symbolicwealth (Baudrilla rd), or patriarchy (feministcritics).Yet this sortof indictment can be quite easily reversed. For what distinguishesMarxism from virtually all versions of dualistic social theory is no t aconstitutive blindness to culture or extra-class conflicts, bu t rath eran insistence upo n approaching all such pheno m ena with du e atten-tion to the historically specific and alterable material-natural and


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366 SCIENCE SOC1ET\'any and all of the phenomena that preoccupy the various styles ofdualistic theorizing , even though political priorities ("program") willinevitably influence the selection of those problems that attractgreater attention and those that attract less.Byway of contrast, dualistic social theor)' necessarily "misses some-thing" that is of utmost significance to the "human condition": tihesocial relations of production in the dialectical mediation of whatdualism posits as the "material-natural" and "ideal-cu ltural" aspectsof human existence. Accordingly, the real issue is not whether thedefining shibboleths of non-Marxist or post-Marxist social theoryshould be addressed, but whether they should be addressed in con-nection with an analysis of the social relations of production, orwhethe r they should be invoked as a rationale for either ignoring thelatter or treating them as mere "epiphenomena" of natural laws, an"independent" (perhaps "spiritually infiuenced") human conscious-ness,or bo th. To fully apprecia te this difference, along with its onto-logical foundation, a number of key themes in Marx's critique ofhitherto-existing philosophy deserve review.Marx'sDialectical Monistic Ontology:Against theMetaphysics \oJ Idealism and D ualism ;

Against all forms of idealism and dualism, Marx embraced amaterialist-monist perspective, one distinguished by the idea thatreality is unified and that its manifold elements are dialectically in-terrelated within a material world anontology that regards all theelements of a dynamic and ever-changing reality as implicated incomplex processes ofmediationwith one ano ther . 'The foundation of this unified reality is a material universe gov-ern ed by natural laws. On this view, human life forms have em ergedover the course of natural history that acquire consciousness and thecapacity for agency, and that enter into definite social relationshipswith one another. Humans constitute society as a kind of "secondnature" an ontological condition that remains subject to eternalnatural laws and constraints, but is also shaped by historically and


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relations/interactions), and conscious activity (encompassing labor, sensuousactivity, creative practice, stibjectivity, self-consciousness,and the ideal ). These three aspects arebyno means separated fromone ano ther. Rather, they interpe netrate with and shade into eachother in complex ways, even as they remain relatively distinct anddistinguishable from one another. Nevertheless, their common on-tological ground is precisely a unifled, material reality.In his Theses on Feuerbach , Marx famously registers the supe-rior historical contribution of idealist philosophy (compared to tra-ditional materialism) in illuminating the human capacity for creativepractice. However, acco rding to Marx, the active side of humanaffairs has always been set forth abstractly by idealism which, ofcourse, does no t know real, sensuous activity as such. The revolu-tionary new materialism tha t he advocates emphasizes htiman activityitselfasobjective activity while also afflrming the relative autonom yof human consciousness from mechanically conceived natural pro-cesses. Already implicit in Marx's formtilation of the problem, then,was the role of the social in media ting the relation between the sen-suous objects and distinct conceptua l objects of Feuerbach's phi-losophy (tha t is to say, between the materialnatural and the idealcom ponents of hum an consciousness). Marx writes: Feuerbach, notsatisfled with abstract thinking, wants [sensuous] contemplation; buthe does no t conceive sensuousness as practical, hum an -se ns uo us ac-tivity. Stich practical, hum an activity is necessarily soci l n form.At the same tim e: All social life is essentially prac tica l. All myster-ies which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution inhum an practice and in the com preh ens ion of this practice. ForFeuerbach, Essence...can be regarded onlyas'species', as an inner,m ute, general charac ter which un ites the many individuals in a natu-ral way. But for Marx, the essence of man is no abstraction inher-ent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of thesocial relations.

Thus, as against any naturalistic conception of the humanessence, Marx's new materialism takes hum an society or socialhum anity the ensem ble of the social relations as its po int of


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368 SCIENCE f SOCIETY

materiaiism is civii society; the standpoint of the new is human soci-ety, or sociai humanity." This iatter standpoint affirms the cruciai roieof the social in m ediating tiie relation between Nature and consciousActivity the better to not oniy interpret the world, but also' tochange it in definite ways. Accordingly, the "practical materiaiism"affirmed here by Marx is on e that regards "the Sociai" as an irredu c-ibie dimension of the unified materiai reaiity of which humanity is apart. IThe speciai attention accorded to the Sociai within Marx's newmateriaiism fundamentally distinguishes his approach from ail duai-istic philosophies and sociai theories that proceed from a presumedopposition between Nature ("the materiai-naturai") and the Ideal(understood as the "spiritually rooted" con tents of human conscious-ness),hideed , itw sprecisely from the ontoiogicai standpo int of"so-ciai hum anity" that Marx berated Pro udhon for "a duaiism betweeniife and ideas, between soui and body, a duaiism which recurs in manyforms" (1989c [1846], 12). |.\ swehave seen, such dualismisendem ic to modern, non-Marxistsocial theory in gnerai, hideed, a formai, unmediated oppositionof the materiai-naturai and the ideai is foundationai to a duaiisticoutiook which necessariiy considers the reiations between facts andvaiues, objects and subjects, structure and agency as eternaiiy prob-iematic, and which persistentiy treats the terms of these dualities asseparated and externaiiy reiated. Whiie Marx distinguishes the termsof such duaiities, he nevertheiess aiso insists upon approach ing themwith due attention to their common, monistic foundation: the "ma-teriaiist connection of men with one another, which is determinedby their needs and their mode of production , and which is as old' asmen themselves" (ME, 1968, 42 ). This "materialist connection ' iscentral to Marx's sociai ontoiogy because it, and not consciousness,spirit or ideas springing from a putativeiy "non-materiai" reaim, is tihereal basis of the "second na ture" constituted as human society. "Thisconn ection is ever taking on new forms, and thus presents a 'history'irrespective of the existence of any politicai or reiigious nonsensewhich wouid especiaiiy hold men together" {ibid. 42).


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ideas s the ind ependent expression in thought of the existing world{ibid. 102).^ In doing so, he elevates the Social to the status of adetermining (as well as determined) moment or aspect of an onto-logical unity in which the Natura l and conscious Activity form theoth er two mom ents. The Social emerges from the shadows of boththe m aterial-natural and the ideal, taking its place as an irreduc-ible element of what might be regarded as a distinctively historical-materialist dialectical triad.Historical Materialismandthe DialecticalTriad

I have been arguing that M arx's ontology is both dialectical andmonistic in its structure. To speak of dialectic is to posit the interre-lations oftwoor m ore terms, while to speak of monism is to affirm afundam ental oneness. Within the oneness tha t is material reality,Marxist ontology posits the dialectical interplay of three distinguish-able and yet inte rpe ne trate d ontological fields : the Natural, theSocial, and conscious Activity. Accordingly, the dialectica l-monisticontology of Marxism has a definite triadic struc ture , on e that oughtto be both explicitly theorized and consciously applied in Marxist-socialist theory, practice and pedagogy.The triadic conceptual structure of Marx's social theory shouldbe somewhat familiar to those with even basic knowledge of his mainwritings. Mszros (1970) has observed tha t Marx's Paris Manuscriptsof 1844 describe the dialectical interrelations within a triad involv-ing Industry, Man and Nature . In Marx's 1859 Preface toTheCon-tribution to the ritique ofPolitical Economy we encounter a triadinvolving (material-natural) forces of production, (social) relationsof production, and a (political and ideological) superstructure.^ Moststrikingly ofall,Marx and Engels refer inThe Gennan Ideologyto threemoments the forces of production, the state of society, and con-sciousness that can and must come into contradiction with oneano ther (ME, 1968, 44). These imm anent contradictions po int to5 Prior to Marx, the social {e.g. Adam Sm ith's conventional or Rousseau's artificial )had been seen eith er as a simple expressionof the natural or as a corruption of it result-


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370 SCIENCE 'SO C IET \'the need to understand the ontological triad not sase mlessorstciticstructure but as astructureinprocessas one subject to bo th quanti-tative and qualitative change. Indeed, a truly dialectical conceptionof "social being" demands an appreciation of this ontological triad'sown historical movement. Such an accotintisoffered in the Gi indrissewhere Marx sketches a three-stage conception of human social de-velopment involving progression from "community" (in which "thenatural" impinges most forcefully on the human condition) to "indi-viduality and external sociality" (the stage most heavily laden vvjithreified "social" forms) to "communal individuality" (the future ccim-munist society in which "conscious activity" comes fully into its own)(Marx, 1973; Co uld, 1978). |In an especially suggestive discussion, Tony Smith (1993) hassought to establish the relevance of Hegel's theoi7 of the syllogismand its triadic struc ture to Marx ism (Hegel, 1969, 1975). For Hegel,the totality that is modern society can be grasped in terms of the re-lations between universality ("objective spirit" as represented by theState), particularity (the socioeconomic institutions ofcivilsociety),and individuality (the sovereign individual, as identified in Locke'spolitical ph ilosophy). According to Smith, Marx's analysis of capital-ism also employs a framework inspired by Hegel's theoiy of the syl-logism, with capital forming the m om ent of universality, the distinctstructural tendencies of capital forming the moment of particular-ity, and the acts of individuals, as dete rm ined by these tendenc ies andmediated by the inner nature of capital, forming the moment of in-dividuality (1993, 16; cf Rosenthal, 1999).Fruitful though it is in many ways, two reservations need to beregistered concerning this Hegelian-Marxist argument. The fns't isthat Hegel's theoiy of the syllogism belongs to a tboroughly idea listand teleological philosophical system which conceives of hu m an his-toiy as unfo lding in accordance with a certain logical (even "deduc-tive") necessity. Marx's materialist conception of history, to thecontraiy, conceives "real, living individuals" as the true subject ofhistoiy, and accordingly considers "the development of social rela-tions from one stage to the next [as] a contingent one" that "follows


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tory and supported deductively by his idealist dialectic. For Marx,however, a materialist concep tion of historyisincom patible with anysuch idealist teleology, and the dialectical interaction of the threefields of his ontology has no necessary, ineluctable outcome.This brings us to the second reservation. Marx's historical ma-terialism is not concerned exclusively with the analysis of modem,capitalist society. Indeed, as we have seen, Marx defines the gen-eral standpoin t of his new materialism as hum an society or socialhumanit)' rejecting Feuerbach 's naturalistic standpoint of speciesessence and the old materialist (political-econom ic) stan dpoin t of civil society, aswell as Hegel's standp oint of the m odern state (con-ceived as the h ighest expression of objective spirit ). This impliestwo things: in the first place, the social relations, structures and formsspecific toparticular human societiesare th e necessary start ing po in t ofhistorical-materialist inquiry; and second, the no tion that either thestate or civil society can be seen as rep resen ting the principle of uni-versality must be rejected.

Within Marx's ontology t ken as a whole the concept of univer-sality is most appropriately aligned with the Natural, the concep tof particularitywith the Social, and the conc ep tof individuality withthe conscious Activity of real, living individuals. Although it istem ptin g to speak of a distinctive historical-materialist dialecdcalsyllogism tha t can be derived from the rational kern el of Hege l'slogical theory, itismore in keep ing with M arx's m aterialist and anti-teleological commitments to speak instead of a dialectical ontologi-cal triad or, bette r yet, asystemof dialectical triads.This system of triads begins with S


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of natu re. The invarianti wsof na ture refer to the universai physi-cai iaws that humans seek to understand and bring under their con-trol, but which they can neither repea l nor escape (for exam ple, thelaws of thermodynam ics, evoiution throu gh natural selection, or thedivision of labor within human co mmunities). The forces of produc-tion refer to the capacities tha t hu m ans have devised to subduena ture , manipulate its iaws, and reduce the bu rden of toii and mate-riai insecurity that afflicts hum ankind. They mediate the relationshipof social humanity to its naturai environment and are centrai to themetaboiic reiation between conscious Activity and Nature. The de-velopment of such capacities/o/Zorwifrom what Marx and Engels calied the first fact of the materialist conception of history: human cor-poreal organization (ME, 1968 [1845]).

Joseph Eracchia has highlighted Marx's and Engels' passingreference to this first fact and its pe rtin en ce to many issues inhistorical-materialist theory, including the satisfactory articulationof the natu rai and the sociai aspects of hum an na ture . Hewrites:Tiie construction of the categorial framework for a historical-materialisttaxonomy [as a categorial replacem ent for 'hum an naU ne' ] begins withthe generic category ofanlagendenoting the general predispositions em bed-ded in human corporeai o rganization. It then moves to thetwosub-categoriesthat together estabiish the range of htiman corporeal predisposition: onedelineating those aspects of himian co rporeal organization thataliow us tomake o ur own historythe bodily instrum ents, capacities, and dexterities;and the oth er delineating those bodily attributes that prevent us from mak-ing our history s wepieasebodily needs, (socio-cnituraiiy mediated) wantsand desires, and bodily limits and constraints which themselves couid betransformed into chaiienges that humans solve through the production ofartifice. (2005, 53.)

On the basis of such a historicai-materialist taxonomy of humancapacities and needs, we can proceed to study the modes of hum anbeing, of socio-cultural forms, in their infinite though not unlimiteddiversity [ibid. 59-60). Erom the standpoint of the dialecticai triad


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AG AINST DUA LISM 37.5

the cooperation of several individtials, no matter under what condi-t ions, in w hat m eas ure an d to wh at en d (ME, 1968, 41 ).For Marx, human cooperat ion can assume many forms: volun-tary and coerced, egali tarian and class-antagonistic, solidarist ic andexploitative; i t can involve bo nds of per son al de pe nd en cy as wellas objective bo nd s an d, in the ft i ture, the universal co m m un albonds of an advanced communist society . Moreover, the goals ofhuman cooperat ion can range from the product ion of the materialnecessities of life, to the creation of semiotic artifacts, to the repro-duction of structures of inequality.In historical m ateria lism , the Social refers to the peo ple-to -people relations and structures that confer particular forms upon them ater ia l -n a tu ra l co nte n t o f soc ia l hum ani ty . Social s t ruc turesare no th ing o ther than re la t ive ly enduring pa t te rns of in te r-humanrelations relations thro ug h which hum an beings transform the n atu-ral world and themselves. Human labor and the process of objectifica-do n are centra l to these transform ations. For this reason , the Socialrefers pre-eminendy to modes of cooperation as consti tuted by defi-n i te re la tions of prod uct ion and repro duc t ion .Close ly co nn ec ted to coo per a t ion in M arx ' s th ou gh t is theco nc ep t of division of labo r. M arx writes:

Within the division of labor, relationships are bound to acquire indepen-dent existence in relation to individuals. All relations can be expressed inlanguage only in the form of concepts. That these general ideas and con-cepts are looked upon as mysteriou.s forces is the necessaiy result ofth factthai the real relations, of which they are the expres.sions, have acquiredindependent existence. (1968, 46.)In a sim ilar vein, M arx insists th at society, irre spe ctiv e of its form is the pr od uc t of m an 's interact ion up on m an (1989c, 29).The social re lat ions of product ion and reproduct ion are at thehe ar t of the Social ; they are bo th defin ed by an d constitutive of suchsocial forms as commodity exchange, wage labor, capital, social class,gender, race, c i t izenship and the family. At the most fundamental


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376 SCIENCE6=SOCIET\'material definition to structures of exploitation and oppression (class,state, race, ge nd er) . Accordingly, a production relation can havelegal, political and familial aspectsas wellas more narrowly conceived economic ones. The category is inheren tly ope n-ended , requiring in each separate instance, as Marx insists, empirical observation[to] bring o u t. . . the connection of the social and political structurewith production (ME, 1968, 36; Sayer, 1987).Th e social field of theSAtriad grows out of the natu ralfield, as form to content. While the relationship is an internal one,social form is ultimately dependent upon natural content. Indeed,the natu ral conte nt of social hum anity or hum an society definesthe limits and potentialities of its forms. But once the social fieldadopts the middle position within the triad (corresponding to a shiftin the focus of analysis to a particular typeof society ,it is also truethatSdefines and sets limits on N. Indeed , within theN< S>Atriad,the Natural is altered and formed in acco rdance with the logic andimperatives of the constitutive social relations. The domination ofaparticularly constituted Social field within a given totality must per-sist until such time as structural contradictions arise between N andS (and are registered a nd addressed by A). Such structural contra-dictions will manifest themselves as serious threats to the integrity orfurther development of the Natural field posed by the continuationof the prevailing social relations of production and reproduction.{Conscious Activity

Dualism in social theory involves a specific form of reducdonism the reduction of the social to one oftwoontological spheres thatare regarded as incommensurable and absolutely distinct from oneano ther: the material-natural and the ideal. Tha tisto say, withindualistic social ontology, the social aspects of the human conditionare understood to be either immutable manifestations or epiphe-nomena of the natural laws of the material universe (encompass-ing non-h um an as well as hum an na ture) or an objectification ofthose elements of hum an consciousness that are considered to have


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AGAINST DUALISM 377

tion that m ind, ideas, and spirit can and do exist apa rt from the do-main of the material-natural.Marx's historical materialism categorically rejects this idealistproposition , insisting that ideas spring no t from any imm aterialrealm b ut from the ma terial-natura l and social conditions of hum anexistence; they are the inde pe nd en t expression in thought of theexisting world in both its m ateria l-na tura l and social dim ensions.What may give ideas the appe arance of an indep ende nt ontologi-cal status is their ability to endure long after the conditions tha t gaverise to them have disappeared. Their origin in human engagement

with concrete practical problems pertaining either to people'srelations to na ture or to each oth er can be forgotten and yettheir hold on human thinking may still persist. For this reason, eventhe most implausible and practically suspect of ideas can neverthe-less rem ain a real material force.In historical materialism, however, consciousness is not merelycoextensive with ideas in peop le's heads or with the ideal as thisis understood in idealist or dualistic ontologies. Consciousness in-volves the ctive rel tionsthat humans establish toward Nature andtoward each o ther , s wellas the capacities they develop through theserelations. It is im portant to emphasize that intellectual capacities, asground ed in hum an corporeal organization and as related to self-awareness in spatial activity, include forms of thou gh t tha t are en-gendered by determinate social relations. The categories of thoughtarise from social intercourse and are no t simply hard-wired into thehuman brain. Marx's reproach of Proudhon's dualism, referred toearlier, was pred icated on just this consideration:

[The] categories are no more etern al than the relations they express. Theyare historical and transitory products. . . . Because Mr. Proudhon posits onthe one hand eternal ideas, the categories of pure reason, and, on the o ther,man and his practieal life which, according to h im, is the practical applica-tion of these categories, you will fmd in him from the very outset a dualismbetween life and ideas, between soul and bodya dualism which recurs inmany forms. (1989 [1846], 11-12.)


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SCIENCE &

can become productive forces (Marxinsists,for exam pie, thata mcieof cooperation is itseif a 'prodtictive force' ), so too can cognitiveforms assume such a roie (ME, 1968, 41 ; Smith, 1992, 1994a). jLanguage, of course , is one of the most powerful and fundarnen-tai components of human conscious Activity, possessing both a natu-rai basis and a practicai function as a means of sociai cooperation.Ne ither circum stance preciudes it from acqu iring a reiativeiy autono-motis iogic or from becoming a means to dissimuiation and oppres-sion rather than authentic communication. But tiie question as towhether it develops as a creative o r destructive capacity m ust turn inlarge part on whether it assists or im pedes conscious Activity in resolv-ing the imm anent structural contradiction between N and S referredto above. jhi mediating the relationship between and N, conscious Activ-ity may obscure and seek to attenuate the contradictions arisinglbe-tween them ; and indeed in norm al times thiswilibe a predom inanttendency. Yet Activity is aiways executed by individuai sociai agentsdifferentiaiiy iocated within class and other social structures. Itis,ofcourse, the optimistic expectation of the founders of historical ma-teriaiism that, as growing numbers of conscious agents come to rec-ognize the destructive consequences of these contrad ictions, hum an(ciass) consciousness and agency wiii seek to overcome them in theoniy progressive way open to tiiem: througii tiie revoiutionary trans-formation of the Sociai.TheCaseof EconomicValue

The usefuiness of the historicai-materiaiist system of diaiectiicaitriads can now be iiiustrated by considering tiie prob iem of vaiueas it is approached by economic theories informed by duaiistic on-toiogy, on the one iiand, and by diaiecticai monism, on the other.The concep t of vaiue, conceived as the basis of the p rice mecha-nism within a market economy, has been a notoriousiy eiusive andcontroversiai one in the iiistory of economic thought. Three basicapproaches to the concept are distinguishabie in this history: a first


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AGA INST DUALISM .?79

and a third, distinctive to Marx and his followers, that regards valueas a social relation of people to people (Marx, 1977; Rubin, 1973;Clarke, 1982).The firsttwoapproaches are united in conceiving econom ic valueas rooted in a material world governed by unalterable natural laws.Valueistherefore considered eternal categoiy necessarily presentin all conceivable human societies. In the classical theoiy, humanlabor itself is treated as a thing, a force of nature, that is related toother things within the economic life process in a purely objectiveway (that is, on the basis of common measure for determining thecosts of produ ct ion) . Value theory, from this perspective, is a way ofdete rm ining natural prices on the supply side thatis,from thestandpoint of costs incurred or resources expended in the materialproduction process. To the extent that subjectivity or consciousnessenters into this approach at all, it pertains mainly to the decisionsmade by capitalists or their managerial agents with respect to micro-level investments, choices of technique, and the m anagem ent of laborprocesses.

In the marginalist theoiy of value, the problem of determiningthe natural prices of commodities is displaced and an attem pt ismade to specify the mechanisms that determine actual market prices.Since the level of demand is based on subjective perceptions of theuses to which commodities can be put, marginalists propose a sub-jectivist theory ofvalue. On this view, the production of commod-ity may enta il definite costs tha t have the ir basis in a material objectworld characterized by scarcity, bu t the actual price of commoditycannot be predic ted solely or even mainly by supply side consider-ations. Rather, given a determinate level of supply, actual prices arefinally dete rm ined on the dem and side, that is, by the psychologicalrelation of prospective buyers to particular goods or sei^vices. Fromthis standpoint, the value of a commodityispre-em inently a functionof its marginal utility (the intensity of consumer preference for it),and value is conceived to be an essentially subjective categoiy, de-tached from any material or properly social dete rm inations.The subject-object dualism that is either latent or openly ex-


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380 SCIENCE SOCIETY'

unmediatedby specifically social relations and forms. This leads to acommon microeconomic focus on the formation of individual prices.In both of these "bourgeois" approaches to valtie, the constitutionof individual prices is considered in isolation from the historicallydeterminate forms and processes that imbricate commodities in astructure of specifically social relations. Value and price are treatedessentially as either "material-natural" or "ideal" categories. Thus,from the stand po int of the h istorical-materialist system of dialecti^caltriads,one mightsaythat classical value theoryisfixated on A


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AGAINST DUALISM 381

A full rehearsal of Marx's analysis of the value-form is hardlynecessary to establish that specifically capitalist social relations ofproduction are a presupposition of his analysis. Before turnin g to thequestion of money (the fully developed/onre of value), Marx had al-ready identified the social subs tance of value as abstract labor,and the m easure of this value-creating substance as socially neces-sary labor time. Moreover, in his discussion of the relative and equivalent forms as the two poles of the simple expression of value,Marx had already identified three peculiarities of the value rela-tion : the appearance of use value as value, the appearance of con-crete labor as abstract labor, and the appearance of social labor asprivate labor. Th e ontological inversions or reversals revealed bythese peculiarities presuppose the presence of the social conditionsand relations of system of generalized commodity production andexchange, that is, the capitalist mode of production.

The u pshot of Marx's theory of value are two postulates that arecen tral to his critical analysis ofcapitalism:1) living labor is the solesource of llnew value (including surplus value), and 2) value existsas a definite quantitative magn itude that establishes pa ram etric lim-its on prices, profits, wages and all othe r expressions of the money-form (Sm ith, 1994a). Th e law of value can prevail only wherecapitalist relations of pro du ction (capitalist exp loitation of wage-labor, the competitive interac tion of many capitals, etc.) media tethe relationship between the satisfaction of human needs (as regis-teredbyconsciousness) and the creadon of use-values (the m ate rial -natural production process). Value (in its fully developed form) canhave neither theoretical pertinence nor concrete existence outsideof these relations.From even this brief (and admittedly cursory) synopsis we canreadily see that Marx's value theory is fully in accord with the histori-cal-materialist focus on the triad N


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AGAINST DUALISM 383

rem inder that the supersession of capitaiistsoci ireiations constitutesa necessary conditionof hu m an progress .Conclusion

In setting forth the key eiem ents of diaiecticai-monistic sociaiontoiogy and proposing tiie idea of historicai-materiaiist system ofdiaiecticai triads, the purpose of this essay has been to suggest a sys-tematicstrategyfor combating the obfuscations of duaiistic thinkingand for sharpening the m ethod s that Marxists can bring to the prac-ticai tasks of sociaiist educatio n, political m obilization, and program-matic eiaboration. Our task, at one level at least, must be to makemateriaiist diaiecticai monism the common sense of the working-ciass movement and its aiiies.The perenniai osciiiation of bourgeois tiiough t between vuigar-materiaiist and subjective-ideaiist perspectives is rooted deepiy in thehegemony of ontoiogicai duaiism, which systematicaily discouragesany seriotis critical interrogation of capitaiism's sociai relations ofproduction and reproduction. Marxists must explore ways to breakout of the blind aiieys of this duaiistic oscillation with a view to ex-posing these social relations as fundamental obstacles to humanprogress and the emancipation of humanity. Oniy on this conditioncan we rise to the chaiienge of Marx's famous edicts: to educate theeducators, and to change and not mereiy interpret, the worid.

Department of.SociologyBrock UniversitySt. Catharines OntarioCanada L2S [email protected]

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