Dialectics of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx's Capital

by Evald Vasilyevich Ilyenkov

Genres: Philosophy, Economics, Politics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Iniciou o curso de filosofia na Faculdade de Filosofia do Instituto de Filosofia e Artes de Moscou em 1941 e, devido à II Guerra Mundial, para a qual foi convocado a lutar pelo Exército Vermelho, concluiu o curso em 1950 na Universidade Estadual de Moscou. Neste mesmo ano torna-se membro do Partido Comunista.

Em 1953 defende sua dissertação de mestrado, intitulada Alguns Problemas na Dialética Materialista da "Crítica da Economia Política" de Karl Marx. Neste mesmo ano passa a dar aulas na Universidade Estadual de Moscou, sendo expulso, em 1955, acusado de revisionismo da base da filosofia Marxista-Leninista, devido aos seus estudos que articulavam ciência e filosofia (sendo a filosofia entendida como reflexão do mundo real no pensamento).

Em 1960 foi publicado seu primeiro livro, A Dialética do Abstrato e do Concreto em “O Capital” de Karl Marx, tendo sido censurado pelas autoridades do Instituto de Filosofia, sofrendo várias alterações e sendo reduzido em mais de um terço. Nele estava contido um manuscrito escrito 4 anos antes, A Dialética do Abstrato e do Concreto no Pensamento Científico e Teórico.

Ilienkov volta a lecionar novamente algum depois de sua expulsão, no Instituto de Filosofia da URSS, no setor Materialismo Dialético (onde trabalhará até sua morte). Neste mesmo ano seus livros passam a ter permissão de publicação e ele defende sua tese de doutorado, intitulada Quanto à Questão da Natureza do Pensamento (Na Análise de Materiais da Dialética Clássica Alemã).

Em 21 de março de 1979, Ilienkov põe fim à própria vida, sendo os motivos ainda incertos.

Ilienkov trabalhou principalmente, a partir de um ponto de vista materialista, sobre a teoria do conhecimento, a lógica e a dialética, enfatizando a unidade entre o subjetivo e o objetivo e a ligação orgânica entre a lógica e a história. Foi um crítico implacável do positivismo, além de discutir questões sobre psicologia e educação e escrever sobre a teoria da personalidade, o desenvolvimento do pensamento e da apropriação do conhecimento no ensino escolar, estando interessado particularmente na teoria da atividade em conexão com a escola histórico-cultural.

Foi conhecido de Mikhail Lifschits e grande amigo de Alexei N. Leontiev (1903-1979) e Alexander Meshcheriakov (1923-1974), inclusive ajudando o último em seu projeto com surdos-cegos em Zagorski.

Ele deixou diversas obras, artigos e manuscritos, que têm sido publicados desde a sua morte por ex-alunos e seguidores de seu ponto de vista filosófico.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ilyenkov’s book is a piercing investigation of the main dialectical principle at work in Marx’s Capital: the ascent from the abstract to the concrete. He identifies the main features of the method, its points of departure from earlier modes of philosophical enquiry, its methodological advantages, the ways in which it is applied in Captial, how that application brought Marx to new and greater understandings of the subject matter, and much more. Yeah, it’s dense and often frustrating but it’s worth it. It clears up and demystifies Marx’s dialectical method and makes even the difficult first few chapters of Marx’s magnum opus more accessible.

Ch. 1
Begins with a historical survey of the use of the terms "abstract" and "concrete" in philosophy from scholasticism to empiricism to Spinoza's rationalism, Kant's Transcendental Idealism up through Hegel. Ilyenkov then explains what is meant by ‘dialectics’ by way of contrast to the "old" formal logic. The essential difference being that in the latter a delineation is made on the basis of what objects those terms refer to while in the former, the distinction is based on how one thinks about those things. The old logic generally says concrete concepts are those which designate objects in reality while abstract concepts designate relations/properties/and the like. According to Ilyenkov, dialectics argues such a distinction is untenable. For dialecticians the difference rests in how things are being cognized, not in what is being cognized. Basically, abstract thoughts are those which represent reality in a one-sided or isolated way while concrete thoughts grasp the totality of relations in which the referent exists. The totality or unity-in-difference is the essence of a thing since the totality "determines" the thing. Once we understand a thing's essence in this sense we have a complex, rich, "concrete" conception of it. We attain concrete thought by means of abstracting more and more definite properties of a thing until it is sufficiently rich in determinations.

Ch. 2
Begins by discussing the starting point for a genuine (concrete) abstraction. It must start with a concept universal enough in the theory to mirror its objective universality in reality. It must be a "cell" of the whole organic system. For the concrete abstractions made in Capital, that starting concept is the "commodity".

The chapter continues with a discussion of the materialist concreteness of knowledge. Its essence in understanding individual moments within the totality of their relations, attacks by bourgeois philosophers and scientists on this model of knowledge on the basis that the totality can never be grasped and so science must be limited to only "relevant" facts with "relevant" being more or less arbitrary, and then Ilyenkov provides a rebuttal to these attacks.

His comments on "internal relations" were especially helpful. According to Ilyenkov those relations internal to an object or concept are those which are both presumed and posited by it. That is, the necessary conditions of the object's existence which are also necessary consequences of its existence. An example would be that commodity relations are internal to the concept of capital since commodities are both necessarily inputed and outputed by the capital circuit.

The chapter continues with a discussion of the concept of "proletariat" in Marx, who defines things in terms of their concrete relations within a totality, and his predecessors, who define things in terms of general features abstracted from the object in thought. And it ends with a commentary on the debate between Kautsky and Lenin on imperialism. Ilyenkov judges Kautsky's account to lack consideration of real practice in theorizing.

Ch. 3
This chapter is entitled Ascent From The Abstract To The Concrete and begins by explaining how a dialectical presentation of a scientific theory should correspond to the dialectical investigation performed as part of the research. The chapter moves on to Hegel's idea of moving from the abstract to the concrete which involves an idealist ontology, rejection of civil society as an organic whole, acceptance of the state/political/legal forms as the full development of that whole which expresses a genuine concrete unity in difference (the system of needs in Hegel's Philosophy of Right is unable to properly mediate the universal and particular thus requiring a reconciliation at a higher level of development).

An excellent part of this chapter was Ilyenkov's analysis of the abstract and concrete as employed in the history if economic thought starting with Locke. Ilyenkov argues the philosophical legacy of empiricism committed political economists to a method wholly unfit to explain social relations of production. That method is essentially inductive since deduction was believed to only apply to an analysis of concepts in which nothing more could be learned about the world except through further analysis (Hume called these 'Relations of Ideas'...essentially tautologies. He called those propositions amenable to inductive reasoning 'Matters of Fact', and since induction is logically inadmissible for proving anything one way or another, nothing in general could be known about the world. Hence the Humean skepticism which awoke Kant from his "dogmatic slumber").

Luckily the classical economists, in their groping through the questions of political economy, stumbled spontaneously on the beginnings of a proper dialectical method of elucidating the concrete reality of economic phenomena from a first principle or overarching theoretical edifice by means of abstraction. Starting with Petty, that overarching theoretical framework for political economy was the labor theory of value and its main idea, up through Marx, was to show the concrete relations which determine profit, price, money, etc. are forms of social labor (value). The project was abandoned by the "vulgar" economists whom Marx derides for rejecting theory and opting for eclecticism to explain phenomena.

The chapter ends on Marx's historicist method. Here I think Ilyenkov leans too heavily on the historical side of dialectics at the expense of the systematic dialectic (See: CJ Arthur The New Dialectic and Marx's Capital)

Ch. 4
Chapter four elucidates "logical development and concrete historicism" starting with a discussion of two possible modes of critique: the historical and the logical. Marx applies the latter in Capital. He then moves on to the pre-capitalist foundations and the capitalist specificity of economic forms (money, rent, commodities, etc.).

Ikyenkov then distinguishes between concrete dialectical historicism and the abstract metaphysical historicism of the bourgeois economists which produce eternalized or naturalistic accounts of capitalism.

Ch. 5
The final chapter is where Ilyenkov begins applying the methods of abstraction and dialectical deduction, which he’s articulated so far, to Marx’s Capital. The starting point for a materialist dialectical analysis is the “concrete universal” from which the following (‘higher’) forms will be deduced. In Capital that concrete universal is ‘value’—the substance of which is abstract social labor and the rest of the work is an explanation of how all the central economic categories of the capitalist mode of production are ‘modes’, ‘modifications’, ‘forms’ of this social substance. The logical corollary being that the higher forms retain the features and contradictions of the earlier stages but in a different way. The main thrust of this chapter will be to show how this dialectical method adequately conceptualizes the capitalist system in ways that earlier classical economists—particularly Ricardo—were unable to because of their misunderstanding the role of contradiction in cognizing reality thus leaving them open to the critiques of the vulgar economists who abandoned the value question all together. In my opinion, Ilyenkov does an excellent job of demonstrating the efficacy of Marx’s method in fully articulating the specificities and relations connecting all the elements of the capitalist mode of production. However, I think his argument for how that method allowed Marx to salvage Ricardo’s insights (ie. that value is essentially labor time) while moving beyond the latter’s failures (that is, Ricardo’s inability to square the circle of the law of value with the equalization of profit rates under competitive market condition) was pretty unconvincing. He doesn't even go into the redistribution of surplus-value across sectors of varying capital/labor ratios as Marx did in Vol. III Part II...never mind going into the transformation problem.

Some of the quick takeaways from the book that I’ll keep in mind going forward in my study of Marx are:

- For Marx the abstract is one-sided cognition; the concrete considers the object’s many relations
- For Marx an abstract universal is based on a “bare identity” (one without contradictions); a concrete universal is an identity-in-difference
- Theoretical contradictions should mirror contradictions in objective reality and the mental resolution of these contradictions through dialectical logic should mirror the real historical development of the mind-independent object under study

[Víctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Évald Iliénkov fue, posiblemente, el último gran filósofo marxista soviético. Basta otear su biografía para constatarlo: reclutado como artillero durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial, participó en la toma de Berlín; durante sus descansos en el frente leía «La Fenomenología del Espíritu» de Hegel, en alemán original. Una vez desmovilizado, regresó a la academia donde fue tratado con infamia, debido a que defendía una dialéctica marxista mucho más rica y compleja que las definiciones osificadas por el Diamat, la interpretación oficial del materialismo dialéctico soviético.

Iliénkov, no satisfecho con sus investigaciones sobre la teoría de la conciencia, elevó a la realidad concreta sus ideas al colaborar en un programa para el desarrollo cognitivo de niños sordos y ciegos; varios de ellos, al crecer, defendieron tesis de doctorado en matemáticas y psicología.

Y es que para Iliénkov el ser humano no nace, se hace a través de su sociabilidad, utilizando el lenguaje como vehículo humanizante. Así, los objetos que el trabajo social produce, constituyen luego la misma naturaleza humana, arrojada a una espiral de auto-determinaciones.

En la twittósfera marxista las ideas de Iliénkov reverberan, recomendando su lectura con entusiasmo. Así que en cuanto supe que Edithor sacaría una nueva traducción al castellano de una de las obras más representativas del filósofo, me hice de un ejemplar: Dialéctica de lo abstracto y lo concreto en "El Capital" de Marx.

Mi aproximación a la dialéctica materialista ha sido un proceso inacabado de más de cinco años, por lo que sería irresponsable ofrecer una explicación cabal de ésta, mas considero obligatorio enunciar, al menos, un esbozo. La presentación a la obra dice:

… Iliénkov recalca, en varias ocasiones, que la dialéctica es el reflejo en la cultura espiritual humana de la forma en que se mueve la naturaleza, la sociedad y el propio pensamiento.

Desde mi limitada perspectiva, la dialéctica es un método para abordar un objeto de estudio, complejo y en constante transformación, con el fin de llevarlo a la consciencia racional del sujeto, y así obtener un conocimiento de su relación. Además, entendiendo la relación podemos cambiar las condiciones en las que surge.

Valga recordar que la dialéctica era una manera frecuente de hacer filosofía desde antes de los griegos, sin embargo, durante el medioevo, fue relegada en favor de metafísicas aunadas a la lógica clásica. Éstos enfoques tienden a proveer instantáneas, estáticas y (sobre) simplificadas, del objeto estudiado. Para la lógica clásica, la contradicción [A ∧ ~A] y mutación, naturales en la dialéctica, son demonios a exorcizar, ya que para la lógica-metafísica debemos adentrarnos, impolutos, en el reino del Conocimiento.

Hegel rescató a la dialéctica, dándole un toque sistemático, poniéndola en movimiento hacia lo absoluto, la totalidad, Dios. Expresado de otra manera, mantuvo la metafísica pero trocó la lógica por dialéctica; por tanto, desechó el mapa estático con rumbo al paraíso, entregando un territorio inhóspito que debemos recorrer, cambiante y conflictivo, para llegar al saber.

Posteriormente Marx puso de cabeza la dialéctica hegeliana: no avanzamos linealmente hacia el Concepto, total y absoluto, sino que nos movemos en espiral dentro de las posibilidades de la materia (no exclusivamente sensible). Para Iliénkov, Marx enderezó la dialéctica de Hegel con Spinoza, otorgándole un horizonte materialista, abierto, carente de teleología, porque

Nadie ha determinado hasta el presente lo que puede el cuerpo, es decir, la experiencia no ha enseñado a nadie hasta ahora lo que, únicamente por las leyes de la naturaleza, considerada sólo como corporal, puede hacer el cuerpo y lo que no pude hacer a menos de ser determinado por el alma.

—Baruch Spinoza. Ética, parte III, escolio de la proposición II. (circa 1665)

Cuando nos embarcamos en la comprensión de categorías y conceptos conviene mantener una perspectiva histórica. Por ejemplo, considerar que la concepción contemporánea de materialismo tiene poca relación con la que trabajó Marx, nos ayuda en su lectura. Así también los conceptos de abstracto y concreto han evolucionado con el tiempo y las genealogías filosóficas, aunque su eco etimológico continúa orientando sus contenidos: con-cretus, significa literalmente "que crece junto con otro"; abs-tractus, "que se aleja del camino".

Desde los escolásticos medievales lo concreto se limitaba a lo sensible, lo que inunda los sentidos; se oponía directamente a lo abstracto, producto exclusivo del pensamiento. Y como lo sensible estaba atado al pecado, lo abstracto se asentó en el pináculo intelectual.

Para el materialismo mecanicista, lo concreto rompía su relación con la realidad objetiva, tornando en la imagen que se fija en nuestra conciencia a partir de la información sensorial, inmediata, individual y subjetiva. Mientras, su antónimo, lo abstracto, refería al objeto sensible amputado de sus determinaciones concretas para fusionarlo con otros objetos en una única idea común, formando jerarquías ontológicas.

Por tanto, con el idealismo alemán la comprensión de lo abstracto y lo concreto da un vuelco: dejan de ser nociones en sí mismas para referir a su uso. Es decir, ahora expresan los grados de determinación de los conceptos en el contexto de una teoría. Un concepto aparece en el mundo como abstracto y cuánto más se penetra en él torna concreto. Lo abstracto es unilateral, aislado, inmóvil; lo concreto es universal, en tanto unidad de lo diverso, en desarrollo, a decir, es el conocimiento de lo verdadero. Después de Kant, el concepto concreto es la meta del pensamiento.

Hegel tiene un breve texto titulado ¿Quién piensa abstractamente?. Un texto muy legible aún para el diletante. Para Hegel es el hombre inculto, no el educado quien piensa abstractamente, y sugiere un ejemplo:

Un asesino es conducido al patíbulo. Para el común de la gente él no es más que un asesino. Algunas damas quizás hagan notar que es un hombre fuerte, bello e interesante. El pueblo, sin embargo, considerará terrible esta observación: ¿qué belleza puede tener un asesino? ¿Cómo se puede pensar tan perversamente y llamar bello a un asesino? ¡No sois sin duda mucho mejores!

—Friedrich Hegel. ¿Quién piensa abstractamente? (circa 1807)

Es decir, y como diría Heidegger siglo y medio después, pensar abstractamente es limitarse a decir lo que se dice, pensar lo que se piensa y hacer lo que se hace; a repetir, acríticamente y evadido de la realidad, el conocimiento unilateral propalado; es ver al condenado únicamente en su papel de asesino y cegarse a todas las demás determinaciones, individuales y sociales, que lo condujeron a ese instante. Hoy en día, "compartir memes" sería, en muchas ocasiones, la manera habitual de pensamiento abstracto.

En cambio, como estableció Marx,

Lo concreto es concreto por ser la síntesis de muchas determinaciones, o sea, la unidad de aspectos múltiples. Aparece por tanto en el pensamiento como proceso de síntesis, como resultado y no punto de partida, aunque es el verdadero punto de partida y también, por consiguiente, el punto de partida de la contemplación y representación.

—Karl Marx, Contribución a la crítica de la Economía Política. (circa 1858)

Estamos frente a una unidad de contrarios del pensamiento: el unilateral y estático, abstracto, y el multilateral y dinámico, concreto. Una unidad dialéctica que genera movimiento, partiendo de lo abstracto, ascendiendo a lo concreto. Es esto lo que Marx consideraba el fundamento del pensamiento científico.

En la escuela se predican dos procesos de estudio: análisis y síntesis. El primero consiste en dividir en partes el todo con el fin de estudiarlas aisladamente. La síntesis es la unión de las partes dispersas en un todo coherente. Recuerdo al futurólogo Alvin Toffler, autor del best seller «La Tercera Ola», ufanarse de tener capacidades superiores de síntesis. No obstante, esta división, para la dialéctica, es ilusoria y hasta ficticia. El análisis correspondería al pensamiento abstracto, mientras que la síntesis al concreto.

No hay análisis sin síntesis y viceversa. Si una de ellas no se explicita es porque supone un saber tácito y por tanto acrítico, por donde se cuela la falsa conciencia.

El método de Marx, en palabras de Iliénkov, consiste en partir del fenómeno más simple e iluminar todas sus determinaciones, luego conocer las condiciones necesarias para su desarrollo. Por esta razón que Marx comenzó «El Capital» con el estudio de la mercancía, átomo del modo capitalista de producción.

Sin embargo, en este ascenso a lo concreto, a lo múltiple y por tanto universal, la percepción historicista es indispensable. El conocimiento científico es un proceso histórico, que se va enriqueciendo o empobreciendo con las condiciones materiales de cada época. Así, por ejemplo, en el tiempo de Newton era impensable que el vacío tuviera forma, la gravedad era una simple relación entre masas; fue Einstein quien enriqueció la teoría de Newton explicando la gravedad como el resultado de la elasticidad del espacio-tiempo en presencia de la masa.

Estamos condenados a pensar en nuestro contexto histórico, y de esto depende el ascenso posible al conocimiento concreto; ascenso historicista, con avances y retrocesos. Y el avance, dentro de la dialéctica, consiste en resolver las aparentes contradicciones que se nos presentan en nuestro proceso de conocer la totalidad de lo real.

[Naeem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read every line hungry for crumbs. I cannot say that I understood everything here. But I have no doubt that a second reading will be even richer than the first.

I have been trying to make sense of those 10 pages in Marx's Grundrisse where he writes about the method of political economy. In a way this book is a 289 page version of those 10 pages. I found especially useful the section title "Abstract and Concrete Historicism" in chapter 4. Here Ilyenkov speaks to the tension between history and logic in Marx's method.

Marx, Engels, and Lenin make no mistakes that Ilyenkov mentions -- they are the unmentioned heros. But then again the book is not meant as a critique so much as an advanced exposition of dialectical science/philosophy. Vulgar economists and Hegel, specifically Hegelian dialectics, are the targets -- which I take to be standard for a book on Marx's dialectics.

I suspect that this is a great book. I just don't have the historical, cultural, and philosophical knowledge to give my intuition more support. My plan is to reread this soon. The essence of pedagogy is repetition, as one of my mentors used to say.

The one star off is really a admission of my own reading abilities.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ilyenkov did not accept the Stalin-derived official Diamat, instead attempting to hew closely to the logic of Marx, Engels, and Lenin:

It is not for nothing that Lenin, having carefully copied a lengthy definition of the path from the abstract to the concrete given by Hegel in the last section of his greater Logic, describes it as follows:

'This extract is not at all bad as a kind of summing up of dialectics.'

Because of his lack of orthodoxy, he spent most of his adult life under censure (as can easily be understood in our own time), though during the Khrushchev years he got a reprieve and, among other things, published this amazing book.

First, Ilyenkov presents a history of the philosophical categories abstract and concrete, focusing in particular on the era between Medieval Scholasticism and Modernism. After, he lays out a clear argument for his reading of Marx's dialectical logic as stated: movement from the abstract to the concrete. He very rigorously defines each category; the concrete:

In analysing the method of political economy, Marx advances a number of propositions of enormous philosophical import. These include the well-known thesis concerning ascent from the abstract to the concrete as the only possible and correct procedure for the solution by thought of the specific task of theoretical cognition of the world.

The concrete, in Marx's conception, is unity in diversity. 'It appears therefore in reasoning as a summing-up, a result, and not as the starting point, although it is the real point of origin, and thus also the point of origin of perception and imagination...

And the simpler form abstract, defined, among other things, in the history of deductive and inductive reasoning:

Deduction based on conscious historicism becomes the only logical form corresponding to the view of the object as historically emerging and developing rather than ready made.

'Owing to the theory of evolution, the whole classification of organisms has been taken away from induction and brought back to "deduction", to descent-one species being literally deduced from another by descent and it is impossible to prove the theory of evolution by induction alone, since it is quite anti-inductive.'

It seems clear Ilyenkov has influenced the general direction of studies in Marx's method over the last few decades, particularly by drawing out the dialectical logic of Capital (and more specifically Capital's first chapter):

The same considerations should apparently be taken into account in tackling the problem of the categories of dialectics as logic and epistemology, as the science of thought. It is capitalist reality theoretically revealed in Capital and other works of the same cycle (both by Marx and by his best pupils and followers, in the first place by Engels and Lenin) that provides the most comprehensive picture of a historically emergent and developed concreteness, as a most typical instance of concreteness in general. It is Capital that we regard as heretofore unsurpassed model of conscious application of the dialectical method, of dialectical logic in the fulness of its content. It shows many sciences their own future, demonstrating in classically clearcut form all those aspects of the method that have not yet been realised in other sciences in the same consistent manner.

At any rate, I don't think it's debatable that this remarkable work is a classic of its particular genre.

[Shaun Terry jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book belongs on my Mount Rushmore of academic books. It's not always an easy read, but it's an incredibly enlightening one. Not only does it help to clearly explain much of what people find mystifying in Marx's Capital; it makes a convincing case for certain philosophical resolutions to longstanding problems. To be clear, many philosophical debates that remain contemporary might be resolved if one reads this book. Often, it even traces the histories of these debates, providing useful accounts for how we got off-track or how certain problems emerged. Whether one's convinced by Ilyenkov, the ideas that he presents here are powerful, and they're difficult to argue against. Of course, many of the solutions that Ilyenkov argues for are, to some degree or another, solutions that Marx at least intimates if he doesn't outright argue for them. Ilyenkov does a good job of showing why those solutions are the right ones (and, yes, in the case of many philosophical problems, he makes a convincing argument that there is but one right answer--the answer that he, following Marx, illluminates).

For anyone who wants a clear, convincing way to understand the world, how to do research, or how to argue, I would recommend no book more highly than this one.

[RoMaAg, es decir, El Ro™ · Rating 5 out of 5]

En este libro, brillante a cada palabra y párrafo que discute, Iliénkov no deja de dar cátedra de una forma absolutamente magistral. Demuestra un conocimiento enorme de Economía Política, Historia y Filosofía. Imprescindible.