Victor Alexeyevich Vaziulin
Contents
1. Introduction. Posing the Problem
2. The Methodology of Researching the Development of Society
3. Society as an “Organic” Whole
4. The Process of Historical Development of Society
5. In Place of a Conclusion
The previous contents were published in the last issue.
3. Society as an “organic” whole
“What is society, irrespective of its form? The product of man’s interaction upon man.”[1]. Let us consider K. Marx’s definition of society independently of any particular social form.
As we can see, K. Marx writes first about human beings, then about their interaction, and finally about the product of their interaction.
The emphasis on society as a product of human interaction in the quoted passage is no coincidence. K. Marx is commenting on the idealistic views of the petty-bourgeois ideologist Proudhon on history: “[…] finally, he (Proudhon―V. V.) finds that men, taken as individuals, did not know what they were about, were mistaken as to their own course, i.e. that their social development appears at first sight to be something distinct, separate and independent of their individual development. He is unable to explain these facts, and the hypothesis of universal reason made manifest is ready to hand.”[2]. K. Marx proves that social development is not something completely independent of human beings, but that it is the product of human activity. In this context, the emphasis is on the critique of the idealist conception of history.
And if we emphasise the dialectical understanding of society as opposed to the metaphysical? Then we should focus on the fact that society is both the result (product) and the process of human interaction.
The interaction of aspects, moments, elements, etc. of processes, things, objects is their true “final cause”[3] (causa finalis.―V. V.). Their internal interaction, interconnection is their true essence. This general dialectical approach also applies to society.
Society is the unity of the external and internal interaction of human beings. External interaction is the interaction of human beings as a natural, living beings; internal interaction is the interaction of human beings as a social beings.
Man is the unity of the natural and the social. If man is considered only as a natural being, then society turns out to be a mechanical aggregate of isolated individuals. If, on the other hand, man is considered only as a social being and his biological nature is ignored, then society is once again assumed, albeit indirectly, implicitly, to be a mechanical aggregate of isolated individuals.
The first tendency found its most developed classical expression in the philosophy of L. Feuerbach, who began with the isolated individual. As early as 1847, K. Marx had already identified this limitation of L. Feuerbach’s views: “Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche Wesen = ‘human nature’]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged: 1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment [Gemüt] regarded by itself, and to presuppose an abstract―isolated―human individual. 2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as ‘species’, as an inner ‘dumb’ generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.”[4]
The second tendency in the approach to society found its most profound expression in the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel’s starting point was the universal reason, detached from the particular and the singular. Applied to the question of society and man, this means that Hegel started from society understood in isolation from the human beings who make up society. The human essence within man was torn away from man himself and projected as an absolute―as God.
Both concepts implicitly assumed as their basis a rupture between society and man, between interaction and those who interact, and consequently in both concepts man appeared as an isolated natural being, connected to other human beings only by natural ties. But while in Hegel society, social development, is presented as something detached, fundamentally different from man and transformed into something divine, Feuerbach, who took note of Hegel’s mysticism, Hegel’s detachment of the universal from the particular and the singular (in our case, the detachment of society, social development, from man), essentially abandoned the interpretation of the universal as different from the sum of the singular and directly expressed the idea of man as an isolated individual and of society as a mechanical aggregate [of individuals][5].
Both concepts are based, explicitly or implicitly, on a rupture between man and society, between the natural and the social in man as an eternal, insurmountable rift. These positions have their social basis in an antagonistic society where social forces genuinely oppose human beings as autonomous entities―unsubordinated to other human beings and operating as hostile forces against them. The greatest development of this independence and hostility of the social forces towards human beings is achieved in capitalist society. Moreover, while social forces are only hostile to the ruling capitalist class to a certain degree (through threats of crises, bankruptcy, etc.), they confront the working class as fundamentally and irreconcilably hostile.
Both concepts emerge from the world of private property. Private property forces the owner to treat all other human beings as means and to see himself as something self-sufficient, as the centre, as the end-goal. All other human beings, from the private owner’s point of view, appear as external to him.
A consistent dialectical understanding of society and man, of the natural and the social in man, was only achieved by the founders of Marxism, for they stood on a fundamentally different social position, on the position of the working class, which, by virtue of its real, material position and its role in production and society, is destined to destroy the exploitation of man by man, the rupture of the social forces from man, their hostility to man, the rift between society and man, to abolish private property, to socialise property, to subordinate the social forces to man. Only from this point of view could it become clear that the social forces hostile to man are created by man himself under certain objective conditions, that man’s hostility to man, the idea of man as an isolated being, hostile or indifferent to other human beings, that all this is not eternal. Marxism shows and scientifically substantiates the ways and means of fundamentally transforming such a society.
In view of the above, let us try to answer the question: what is the starting point in the study of society: the individual or society itself?
From the above it follows that one cannot begin from the individual, isolated from society, for then all that is social in man disappears, and he appears only as an animal, as a natural being, connected with other similar beings only by natural ties; the specificity of the social, the essence of man, falls out of sight and becomes inexplicable; but one cannot begin from society, taken in its detachment from the individual, for then society, social development, appears as a divine, supernatural, inexplicable force. If one begins from man isolated from society, and from society as an external and superhuman force, then the rupture between them does not disappear and the explanation of society remains impossible. The explanation of society can only be sought by understanding it as the interaction of human beings.
It would seem―if one starts from the simple negation of the approaches listed in the previous paragraph―that one should stop at the fact that, since man as man exists only in society, and society is the product of the interaction of human beings and, consequently, does not exist without the human beings who constitute it, i.e., if man and society exist only in their mutual conditionality, then one must simultaneously explain the first by the second and the second by the first. However, the simple negation of the approaches listed in the previous paragraph does not make it possible to resolve the question of man and society completely and correctly.
One cannot separate human beings from their interaction, but neither can one absolutely identify human beings with their interaction. The dialectical solution to the question lies in the fact that human beings and their interaction are simultaneously identical and different.
It is precisely for this reason that it does not matter where one begins: with human beings or with the product of their interaction.
Marxist literature currently gives two typical answers. Some argue that Marxism has always taken the “empirical individual” as its starting point, while others argue that the starting point in Marxism can only be society. We believe that neither of these views can be fully accepted. These different positions are expressed, for example: the first―in the interesting book by F. Tökei, “Towards a Theory of Social Formation” (Moscow, 1975), the second―in the detailed epilogue to his book, written by V. Zh. Kelle.
Thus, F. Tökei essentially expresses the view that the classics of Marxism-Leninism always begin from the “empirical individual” and illustrates this with quotations from the works of K. Marx and F. Engels. However, he does not always consider the context in which the quotations he cites are used. F. Tökei does not reveal the point of his insistence on beginning with the “empirical, concrete individual”, nor does he analyse the relationship between the individual and society from this position. In essence, therefore, it remains largely unclear how this position differs from Feuerbach’s.
The decisive arguments against this view are well formulated by V. Zh. Kelle:
“K. Marx and F. Engels, as historical materialists, always started with historical reality and did not form a priori constructions. ‘To begin with the real’, according to Marx, means to proceed from the ‘totality of all social relations’ which constitute the ‘essence of man’, to single out in them the main, determining―material relations, to show the conditionality of the latter to the development of the productive forces, and so on. Therefore, outside the analysis of social relations, we cannot say anything concrete either about the ‘empirical individuals’ themselves or about the nature and direction of their activity: The ‘empirical individual’ as such, is the starting point for positivist sociology, which is concerned with describing the ‘behaviour’ of this individual but only skims the surface of the phenomena. The path of Marxist analysis is therefore from society to man. And this is the main principle that the founders of Marxism-Leninism themselves have repeatedly and quite unambiguously stated”[6].
The essence of the arguments is that since the essence of man is the “totality of all social relations”, outside of society, “concrete individuals” have no social nature and nothing can be said about them as social individuals, while the choice of the “empirical individual” as the starting point of positivist sociology leads to only scratching the surface. Therefore, one should start from society, not from the “concrete individual”.
If we reveal the dialectical-logical basis of this reasoning, it can be expressed as follows: in studying the interaction of some elements, aspects, which form a system, one should begin with the interaction, with the essence, and from there proceed to the consideration of the elements, aspects, to the surface; this is necessary because the essence, the interaction, is the main, determining factor for understanding the elements, aspects as elements, aspects precisely of this system, this interaction. Thus, it is implicitly (perhaps unconsciously) assumed that Marxism, in its understanding of society, necessarily begins from the essence to the surface, whereas if the starting point is the surface, this inevitably leads to skimming the surface, to the inability to understand, to explain the essence (hence the reference to positivist sociology). The movement from the surface to the essence is thus essentially excluded from Marxism.
In the first chapter we already noted that the movement of knowledge is from the surface to the essence and from the essence to the surface (more precisely, to the phenomenon and to reality). These opposite movements of cognition always occur simultaneously, but at the same time, in certain stages of cognition, the movement from the surface to the essence first dominates, determining the main character of the stage of cognition, and then from the essence to the surface.
The opposing views on the starting point of the study of society, as expressed in contemporary Marxist literature, implicitly contain the dilemma: either the only path of cognition is from the surface to the essence, or the only path of cognition is from the essence to the surface.
The proponents of the second part of the dilemma admit, consciously or unconsciously, that the path of knowledge from the surface to the essence is inseparable from the bourgeois worldview, particularly from the specificity of Feuerbachianism and the specificity of the approach of bourgeois political economy, especially of the 17th century. And they are right in the sense that the path of knowledge from the surface to the essence, isolated from the opposite path, inevitably leads to positivism, etc., and is typical of bourgeois ideology. But the path of cognition from essence to surface, isolated from the opposite path, leads to idealism and metaphysics. In its most developed form, this latter approach was carried out by Hegel.
The specificity of Marxism also consisted in the fact that K. Marx and F. Engels did not simply reject the views of Hegel and Feuerbach, and did not simply combine Feuerbachianism and Hegelianism in a mechanical way, but reworked the views of Feuerbach and Hegel, revealing the rational moments in them.
In Capital, this approach was put into practice in relation to the task of researching the development of the capitalist economy.
The logic at work in the representation of the capitalist economy in Capital is, in its universal moments, applicable to the representation of society.
Indeed, if we compare the definition of society given by Marx in his letter to P.V. Annenkov (the quote was given at the beginning of this chapter) with the definition of capitalist wealth in Capital, we will see that there is more than an outward logical similarity between them.
“The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,” (in the German text: ‘Warensammlung,’ i.e., in the exact translation, “collection of commodities.”―V. V.), its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity.”[7]. The collection, the accumulation of commodities, is the interaction of commodities as it appears on the surface, at first sight. K. Marx goes on to show that the commodity, as the elementary form of capitalist wealth, does not exist as a commodity in isolation from other commodities; it becomes a commodity only in interaction with other commodities, and commodity relations, having become dominant and universal in society, are capitalist relations.
Thus, the elementary form of capitalist wealth is the individual commodity; in society as such, taken independently of any form, the element is the individual person; capitalist wealth is formed by the interaction of commodities (which on the surface appear merely as a simple collection, an accumulation of commodities), human society [is formed][8] by the interaction of human beings.
In both cases there is an interaction of elements; in the first case of commodities, in the second of human beings.
It follows that the logic of Capital, insofar as it is the logic of representing the interaction of elements, aspects, is fully applicable to the consideration of society as such.
Before K. Marx, the representation of capitalist wealth was faced with the same question as the representation of society. Where to begin? With the commodity or with capital? The commodity as an element of capitalist wealth is always a capitalist commodity: isolated from capital, the commodity is no longer a commodity of capitalist society, it is no longer an element of capitalist wealth. But at the same time, capital is a collection of commodities. There is a circle: there is no capital without commodities, but there are no commodities as elements of capitalist wealth without capital; in capitalist society, capital and commodity mutually condition each other. To understand what a capitalist commodity is, one must first understand what capital is, but to understand what capital is, one must first understand what a capitalist commodity is.
We encounter a similar situation when we consider society as such. To understand human beings as human beings, and not as animals, one must understand society, social relations. But to understand society, social relations, one must understand human beings, the product of the interaction of which is society.
This difficulty arises whenever it is necessary to represent the interaction of aspects, elements. For an element, insofar as it is an element precisely of this interaction, is determined in its specificity by this interaction. It is therefore necessary, first, to understand this interaction itself. But on the other hand, interaction is the interaction of elements, and one cannot understand interaction without first understanding the parts that are interacting.
A contradictory situation arises: a necessary condition for understanding the one, is the prior understanding of the other, and the understanding of the other is possible only with the prior understanding of the first.
Any given interaction has a certain stability at a given time and can therefore be considered from the point of view of its functionality. At the same time, every interaction is a historical process; it changes over time.
It is expedient to consider first how the interaction of elements (elements can be goods, human beings, etc.) is represented as a functional interaction, i.e. in the purely logical aspect, and then to shift to the consideration of interaction as a historical process. A full justification of the legitimacy of this precisely, and no other representation of interaction, can only be given by representing interaction in the unity of its functional and historical development.
In the most general terms, what is the course of K. Marx’s thought in considering interaction as functional interaction? K. Marx begins his consideration of capital in Capital with the commodity, not with capital. He moves from commodity to capital, from the elements to their interaction.
On the other hand, if one accepts the view that in the analysis of society, Marxism moves from society to man, to the individual, and not the other way round, then one would expect K. Marx to have begun his consideration of capitalist wealth in Capital with capital and proceeded from capital to the commodity. After all, to explain the commodity as an element of capitalist wealth, is first and foremost to explain capital.
As the text of Capital progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the commodity is the correct starting point for considering capital, both logically and historically.
K. Marx begins his characterisation of capital with the commodity and moves on to capital, or more precisely to the representation of the production of surplus value. This is the main path of K. Marx’s thought in the first volume of Capital. In the second volume of Capital, K. Marx returns, as it were, from capital to the commodity, but if in the first path he emphasised in the commodity that it was a capitalist commodity, in the second path it is established that it is a capitalist commodity, that capital manifests itself in the commodity. In the third volume of Capital, K. Marx reveals the forms of unity of the essence of capital (the production of surplus value) and the manifestation of capital (the circulation of capital).
Let us try to characterise, in the most general terms, the logic of the representation of society as such.
The starting point of the representation of society as such, should be man, but man in his immediate givenness. The connection between man and society will initially appear only as immediately given in the individual human being.
How is man given when we consider him directly?
First, man appears as a living being, forced to maintain his life and therefore forced to satisfy his needs for food, clothing, shelter and the continuation of his species.
Of course, all these needs are by no means entirely identical with the needs of animals; they already contain human specificity. But as long as man is only taken at face value, and it is not explained how that which is specifically human in man emerges, develops and is “produced”, what is inherent in man precisely as a man, and what is inherent in him as a mere living being, cannot be distinguished from each other and do not become the subject of special consideration.
“Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.” wrote K. Marx and F. Engels in The German Ideology.[9]
The transition to the consideration of labour, the production of the means of subsistence, is the transition to the consideration of the essence of society.
The productive relation of man to nature includes human need, perceived as an end, the object of purposeful action, the means of action, and the purposeful action itself. The purposeful productive action of man on nature is labour.
In the simplest case, labour and production are identical (although, as K. Marx shows in Capital, this is an identity with a difference). Labour in general, as specifically human labour, is classically and clearly defined by K. Marx in Capital.
Since the development of labour and production, takes place in order to satisfy the physical needs of human beings, the development of labour (and production) is an external necessity.
The necessity of the development of labour (and production), which is internal, is generated by labour (and production) itself. From the point of view of internal necessity, the development of labour (and production) is a self-movement.
What, then, is the internal source of the development of labour? It must lie in the specific nature and interaction of the necessary components of labour in general.
Labour as self-development, as an end in itself, is carried out to satisfy needs, but these are needs “internal” to labour, needs of labour itself. The internal needs of the labour process are needs generated by the labour process itself, and the improvement of the labour process presupposes knowledge of the object, the means, the result of labour, it presupposes creativity. Thus, the internal need for the development of labour, that is, the need for labour, is multifaceted: it is the need to acquire knowledge, the need for creativity, the need to improve the labour process, and so on.
The consideration of the labour process brings us back to man. But now the individual is seen through the prism of the labour process as self-development, through the prism of the essence. Now it is not only the individual that is fixed, but the qualities of the individual as a personality. Personality is the individual insofar as the social essence is accumulated in him, or the individual as the manifestation of the social essence[10].
So far, we have discussed the productive relationship of the individual to nature, taken in itself. Man, however, does not engage in labour and produce in isolation from other people, but in interaction with other people, in society. The social character of labour is brought to life both by external necessity, by factors external to labour, and by internal necessity, by internal connections and relations within the labour process.
As labour develops, the internal factors related to the labour process, which determine the social character of labour, play an increasingly important role. In developed labour, external factors persist, although they are not the most important ones.
What, then, are the internal factors of the labour process that determine its social character? These are different moments of the labour process in general, which have become the particular activity of different human beings. For example, the formulation of labour objectives is carried out by some human beings, their execution by others, and the control of their execution by still others, and so on. In turn, the formulation of objectives can be divided into a number of interrelated moments (the labour of the scientist, the labour of the designer, the labour of the engineer, etc.), and the same applies to the execution. In this case, different human beings or different groups of human beings carry out different moments of a single labour process. Here, different human beings act as carriers of different moments of the labour process. The labour process itself, the internal relation of its moments, determines the productive relation of a collective of human beings towards nature (ultimately of the whole of society, if the economy of the whole of society becomes an internally unified whole). Human beings, insofar as they carry out different moments of a single labour process, enter into technical relations with one another.
Man, ultimately enters into a productive relationship with nature, first and foremost in order to satisfy the needs conditioned by his bodily organisation.
The relations between human beings, from the point of view of the satisfaction of physical needs, are direct relations of the distribution of the products of labour, of production, among human beings. What determines the distribution of the products of labour, of production? The distribution in the labour process. The relations between human beings in the distribution of the products of labour, of production, and those relations in production itself which lead to the distribution of products, are relations of production.
Technique and technical relations are the means in the process of human transformation of nature. Consequently, human beings, as moments of technical relations, act as means, not as the end of production. The consideration of relations of production, on the other hand, is the consideration of the objective relations of human beings in production from the point of view of the possibilities of satisfying the material needs of human beings, i.e. from the point of view of the objectives of the transformation of nature.
Thus, we started from the fact of the bodily organisation of individuals and the physical needs that result from it, then moved on to production as a means of satisfying physical needs, and finally returned, as it were, to the starting point. But now we are no longer talking about the physical needs of man as a particular living being, but about the relations of individuals to each other in terms of their physical needs, insofar as these relations are conditioned by production as a means of satisfying them. It is only at this stage of the movement of thought that the need to distinguish not only the category of “relations of production” but also the category of “productive forces” becomes fully apparent.
The category “productive forces” encompasses not only the instrumental relation to nature as such (hence not just technical relations), nor the relation to nature in itself.
What is reflected in the category of productive forces―and this is very important―is the productive relation to nature, not in isolation from social relations of production, but in internal connection with them.
From what has been said, it follows that the category of relations of production cannot be distinguished if cognition does not penetrate into the internal connection between production and needs, production and consumption, production and distribution, and exchange. If only an external connection is established between production and needs/consumption―where production serves merely as a means for consumption, for satisfying needs―then the production relations cannot be revealed in their essential character, for it is precisely within them that the unity of both moments is realised. If distribution is separated from production, then although the relations of production appear explicitly in the distribution of the products of production, they cannot be understood as conditioned by production itself, and consequently the relations of production in production itself disappear, and the distribution of products appears arbitrary.
Based on the consideration of productive forces and relations of production, there is, as it were, a return to the starting point, to the individual. But now the individual appears as a personality and the relations between individuals as personal relations.
Thus, the starting point of consideration is man as he is immediately given, i.e. man as a living being, forced to maintain his physical existence, to satisfy his physical needs and to perpetuate his species. The transition to the characterisation of labour, the production of means of subsistence, is the transition to the consideration of the essence, the internal interaction of human beings. Returning then to individuals, we see that they now appear, enriched by internal, essential interrelations, as personalities, and their relations as personal relations.
All other social relations, e.g. moral, aesthetic, etc., turn out to be forms of the relations of human beings as personalities, personal relations.
We shall confine ourselves to these brief remarks on the consideration of the interrelation of the aspects of society as a functioning “organic” whole, for our task is not to consider society systematically as an organic whole, but to show the possibility and necessity of such consideration.
Notes
[1] Letter from K. Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, December 28, 1846
[2] As above.
[3] Translator’s note: The author refers to the Aristotelian definition of the end, purpose or final “cause” (τέλος, télos) as that for the sake of which a thing is done.
[4] K. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, 1845
[5] Translator’s note.
[6] V. Zh. Kelle. Afterword to the book by F. Tökei “Towards a Theory of Social Formations”, 1975, p. 264-265.
[7] K. Marx. Capital Volume One, Part I: Commodities and Money, 1867
[8] Translator’s note
[9] K. Marx. The German Ideology. 1845
[10] In our opinion, this should be the basis for the distinction between the personality and the individual. A person cannot consider himself to be a true personality as long as their primary goal is only the maintenance of their own physical existence and reproductive relationships.
