Phil3395: Marx

Novy SP09

Notes for Lee’s Chapter 3: Dialectics as Historiography

Historiography

1. Theory of history which predicts the evolution of events given those relations whose material, cultural, and technological development give rise to them

1. I.e., relations within and among species being.

2. Human history is a single, non-repetitive process, which obeys discoverable laws

3. Each moment of this process is unique; nevertheless, it follows from the preceding state

2. History for Hegel: The movement of Spirit through ideas made manifest in collective human actions

1. Humans overcome (antithesis) the status quo (thesis) to form a new state of affairs (synthesis)

2. Human events: concrete embodiment of Spirit’s attempts to comprehend itself

3. History for Marx: Dialectical materialism

1. Humans are the creators of ideas via praxis

2. Eudemonia is the aim of reasoned action

The Science of Political Economy

4. Human history: the history of fulfilling human need

1. Our relationships are governed by historically specific forms of economic exchange.

2. Political economy: the macroscopic examination of the laws which govern history

5. Marx’s historiography is a “moral science of the history of political economy”

6. Fundamental Analogy

1. To whatever extent humans “act as they do in virtue of the economic relationships in which they in fact stand to other members of society,” …

2. “So too the behavior of an economic class is determined by the relationships of production which govern … the position and social status of that class.”

7. Desire is a constituent feature of species being

1. Human physical & psychological facts determine

i. the scope, shape, & trajectory of what these facts condition,

ii. including how much oppression can be endured before revolt becomes inevitable

Hegel’s Master/ Slave relationship

8. The Other is necessary for my recognition of myself

9. Capitalism links the means of life (means of production) to the continuity if this recognition (conditions of labor), the capitalist guarantees not only his access to capital, but access to consciousness of himself as master

The Master/Slave Relationship, Again

10. Autonomy does not require dominance of another

1. M/S is not fundamental to our psychology, but merely a capitalist labor arrangement

11. The slave’s survival requires he know everything important to being the master

12. Recognition of the collective dependence of the master on the slave

1. Class consciousness is experienced as alienation

13. The status quo (thesis) is confronted by and produces the knowing workers (antithesis) which overcome the conditions of oppression itself (synthesis)