{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","id":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","uuid":"cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","normalized_title":"marxandtheconceptofhistoricaltime","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":216,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Marx%20and%20the%20Concept%20of%20Historical%20Time","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/cfa147d3-494e-49cc-b356-7aceff50b181/search"},"page":{"printed_page":13,"pdf_page":17,"physical_index":17,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ea55c08e1a61fb34c82f5b8494d443969aed0e10bb114dd9a7322ac205ed4e9f"},"chapter":"Marx and the Concept of Historical Time","content":"The removal of a fixed distinction between praxis and poiêsis in The German Ideology is sustained by a unique philosophy of history. As Balibar puts it, ‘there is never any effective freedom which is not also a material transformation, which is not registered historically in exteriority. But nor is there any work which is not a transformation of self, as though human beings could change their conditions of existence whilst maintaining an invariant “essence”.’<sup>8</sup> In Marx, after 1845, ‘materialism’ must already be a historical materialism if it is to have any meaning as a practical and social materialism. To be sure, temporality is introduced by Marx’s practical materialism in the Theses on Feuerbach, inasmuch as ‘sensuous human activity’ is an implicitly temporal concept. At the same time, the temporality of practice is not redeemed by these theses. This redemption is left to The German Ideology, wherein the temporality of practice is grounded by the historicalising concept of need. Because it historically grounds the materialism of the Theses on Feuerbach, The German Ideology introduces a distinct historical temporality to labour as practice immanent to need. Does The German Ideology enable us to read materiality as temporality in Marx? This remains to be seen.<sup>9</sup> As Althusser puts it, we are still far from clearing up ‘the confusion that surrounds the concept of history.’<sup>10</sup> To invoke Marx, the unexplored interchange [Austausch] between materiality and temporality heightens the need to address the following questions: what are the philosophical outcomes of a temporal reading of Marx’s practical, social, and historical materialism? What interpretive possibilities are introduced? If Marx’s materialism is in fact a ‘new’ materialism, does it thereby introduce a new temporality? That is, does this materialism affect a new configuration between the past, the present and the future? If The German Ideology subjects the materialism of the Theses on Feuerbach to a historical logic, is a new historical temporality thereby produced? What light do these questions shed on the relationship between time and history, if indeed the concept of one poses a problem for the philosophy of the other?<sup>11</sup> These questions mark the beginning of the central problem of this thesis: how do we critically reconstruct Marx’s materialist concept of history as a concept of historical time?\n\n<sup>6</sup> William Haver’s contention that ‘…in Marx, the mode of production is ontology. There is nothing outside a mode of production…’ is only sustainable from the standpoint of the philosophy of time. William Haver, ‘For a Communist Ontology,’ in The Politics of Culture: Around the Work of Naoki Sakai, ed. Richard Calichman and John Namjun Kim (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 107. <sup>7</sup> Marx, Grundrisse, 205, 361. The latter quotation reworks Hegel’s position in the Logic that ‘matter is that which is indifferent to form.’ See G.W.F. Hegel, The Science of Logic [1812], trans. A.V. Miller (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969), 451. Still, it is unclear in this passage if the human is itself included within the realm of ‘things’. Minus such inclusion, the indifference between ‘living time’ and the ‘temporality of things’ cannot be historicised.\n\n<sup>8</sup> Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, 40.\n\n13","previous_page":12,"next_page":14}