{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title":"The Violence of Abstraction The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0631153187","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","uuid":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title":"The Violence of Abstraction The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism","normalized_title":"theviolenceofabstractiontheanalyticfoundationsofhistoricalmaterialism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0631153187","isbns":["0631153187"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":93,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/The%20Violence%20of%20Abstraction%20The%20Analytic%20Foundations%20of%20Historical%20Materialism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":127,"pdf_page":69,"physical_index":69,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"38f8db8f14c7379dd0bb761c366c01f5cad9439b5097b5c01b47e1c6ab37a431"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"The historicity of concepts\n\nLet me now try to pull together some of the major arguments of this book. Since my main concern has been with the fundamental concepts of historical materialism - forces of production, economic structure/relations of production, and superstructure – it is worth reminding ourselves, to begin with, how Marx himself regarded theoretical categories. They were not free-floating analytic devices, innocent of historical content. Rather, for him ideas, categories' are but 'the abstract ideal expressions of . . . social relations. Indeed, the categories are no more eternal than the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products'(1846b: 189). Hence, 'in the succession of the economic categories, as in any other historical, social science, it must not be forgotten that their subject - here, modern bourgeois society - is always what is given, in the head as well as in reality, and that these categories therefore express the forms of being, the characteristics of existence'. Marx adds, with emphasis: 'this holds for science as well' (1857: 106). There is no theoretical Archimedean point, from which scientific analysis could commence, which lies outside the history and societies of which historical materialism tries to make sense. For Marx, our categories of analysis inescapably partake of the social reality they seek to depict; they bear the stamp of history' (1867a: 169).\n\nThis remains the case even for – and perhaps especially for - the most apparently pure and simple of abstractions, like the Hegelian concept of property, ostensibly the subject's simplest juridical relation', discussed in chapter 3. Such abstractions always presuppose some definite concrete substratum' (1857: 102). Similarly with the idea of the ‘abstract individual', discussed in chapter 4. Indeed Marx argues that ‘as a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears as common to many, to all' (ibid.: 104). ‘Simple' categories are latecomers on the historical stage. The historicity of such analytic categories is not, however, by any means always apparent. They appear as, precisely, abstractions - concepts whose content and validity are not circumscribed by time or place, which may therefore be applied quite legitimately to the analysis of any mode of production or social formation. Marx questions this appearance of pure' abstraction, and denies such universalistic pretentions.\n\nIn the 1857 General Introduction, he considers this question at length with regard to the conceptual fundamentals of political economy. He identifies a persistent ambiguity of reference in economists' categories. The abstraction of the category \"labour\", \"labour as such\", labour pure and simple', for instance, in one sense expresses an immeasurably ancient relation valid in all forms of society'. At the same time, Marx maintains that the concept ‘achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society'. It becomes thinkable’ in such abstraction only in ‘a form of society in which individuals can with ease transfer from one labour to another, and where the specific kind of labour is a matter of chance for them, hence of indifference' (1857: 104–5). In Capital Marx suggests that Aristotle was precluded from developing a concept of value based on labour because of the absence of this material presupposition (1867a: 59–60); Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and their labour-powers'. Elsewhere he develops similar arguments to explain the physiocrats limitation of the category of value-producing labour to agricultural labour alone (1863a: ch. 2; 1857: 104), and Petty's restriction of the labour theory of value to labour which produces gold and silver (1859b: 54). The 1857 Introduction draws this general conclusion:\n\nThis example of labour shows strikingly how even the most abstract categories, despite their validity - precisely because of their abstractness - for all epochs, are nevertheless, in the specific character of this abstraction, themselves likewise a product of historic relations, and possess their full validity only for and within these relations. (1857: 105)\n\nTHE HISTORICITY OF CONCEPTS\n\n127\n\n6","previous_page":null,"next_page":null}