{"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":"6 / 7","pdf_page":9,"physical_index":9,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6cf7b14d9e9977246c3bf7576adf4cc1cbe275e9460da732c6057a90becc6e5c"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"Engels's best known revisionist' formulations are contained in his letter to Joseph Bloch of 21 September 1890. Here he qualifies the apparent determinism of Marx's 1859 Preface thus:\n\nAccording to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever asserted more than this. Therefore if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he is transforming that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various components of the superstructure – political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, such as: constitutions drawn up by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflections of all these actual struggles in the minds of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas - also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases determine their form in particular. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless number of accidents ... the economic movement is finally bound to assert itself. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history one chose would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree. (1890b: 75-6)\n\nEngels goes on to say that we make our own history, but under definite conditions, amongst which the economic ones are ultimately decisive'. He also offers an image of history as the product of innumerable cross-cutting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces', the unplanned resultant of the play of myriad individual wills and actions. If these latter are impelled by external, in the final analysis, economic circumstances' they cannot on that account be disregarded; for each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it' (ibid.: 77).\n\nOther letters say similar things. The letter to Schmidt of 5 August 1890, describes people's material mode of existence’ as ‘the primum agens', but immediately adds that this does not preclude the ideological spheres from reacting upon it in their turn, though with secondary effect' (1890a: 71-2). Writing again to Schmidt, two months later, Engels speaks of the inherent relative independence’ of the state, and conceives its relation with the economy as the interaction of two unequal forces' (in which ‘the retroaction of the state power on economic development can do great damage to the economic development’). Law, likewise, must not only correspond to the general economic condition and be its expression, but must also be an internally coherent expression’ (1890c: 84). Hence ‘it rarely happens that a code of law is the blunt, unmitigated, unadulterated expression of the dominance of a class – this in itself would offend the \"conception of right\"’. In sum, ‘ideological outlook influences in its turn the economic basis and may, within certain limits, modify it' (ibid.: 85).\n\nSpeaking of literature and philosophy, Engels - in yet another avatar of the relative autonomy' argument – describes the ultimate supremacy of economic development' as in this case operating only 'within the terms laid down by the particular sphere itself' (ibid.: 86). His letter to Mehring of 14 July 1893, offers still another formulation, which is in some ways at odds with the ‘inherent relative independence' model: it is ridiculous, he says here, to assume that ‘because we deny an independent historical development to the various ideological spheres we also deny them any effect on history' (1893: 92). Similar arguments are advanced in the letter to Borgius (previously published as to Starkenburg) of 25 January 1894. In this case it is economic necessity’ which is finally seen as having to assert itself. And Engels introduces one more analogy from the mathematical realm:\n\nThe further the particular sphere which we are investigating is removed from the economic sphere and approaches that of pure abstract ideology, the more shall we find it exhibiting accidents in its development, the more will its curve run zigzag. But if you plot the average axis of the curve, you will find that this axis will run more and more parallel to the axis of economic development the longer the period considered and the wider the field dealt with.(1894a:103)\n\n6\n\nPROLOGUE: MARX'S 'GUIDING THREAD'\n\nPROLOGUE: MARX'S 'GUIDING THREAD'\n\n7","previous_page":8,"next_page":10}