ROSLYN WALLACH BOLOGH - Dialectical Phenomenolgy

In the work that follows, I analyze Marxs theorizing. I do so by concentrating on his method. I formulate this method as dialectical phenomenology. The body of this book spells out this method and illustrates it with a reading of the Grundrisse: Foundations ofthe Critique of Political Economy,

Since its translation into English the value of the Grundrisse for understanding Marxs theorizing has become more widely recognized. In 1971 McLellan translated a volume of selected excerpts and in 1973 Nicolaus translated the whole text. The Grundrisse is particularly important as it combines the humanistic, philosophical concerns found in Marxs early writings with the technical analysis found in Capital.

The following work differs from previous treatments of Marx in several ways. It conceives of Marxs method as a form of anti-positivism. By anti-positivism, I refer to a perspective that consists of questioning taken-for-granted prevailing conceptions of reality, objective knowledge or science. It inquires into how any given knowledge or reality is possibleits grounds or historical presuppositions.

The aim of this work is to show the possibility of theorizing that is conscious of historical grounds or presuppositions as opposed to the unself-conscious mode that has characterized the main tradition of sociology. As Rossides (1978, p. 531) concludes in his analysis of the history and nature of sociological theorizing, The only choice open to social scientists is between being historical consciously (or problem-oriented) and being unconsciously historical (ideological).

Although others have read Marx as a critical and anti-positivistic theorist, they tend to interpret key aspects of his work positivistically. As against these inconsistent readings of Marx (which I discuss in the concluding chapter), this book presents an interpretation of Marxs work as exemplifying a consistently and completely anti-positivistic approach. I argue for this interpretation by analyzing Marxs method of theorizing. The interested reader might begin with the concluding chapter which highlights the similarities and differences between these other phenomenological readings of Marx and my own.

The method of theorizing that I attribute to Marx overcomes the dichotomy between a phenomenological sociology associated exclusively with the micro-level of social life (individuals and their subjective mental states and their face-to-face interaction) and a structural sociology associated with the macro-level (political and economic systems). It combines an analysis of language with an analysis of social life. It does so by suspending a mathematical version of language as composed of static elements, treating language instead as a form of life, a way of (re)producing a social world. Thus it adds the dimension of language but shifts from a notion of language as separate from life to a conception of language as a form of life itself.

Phenomenology has been criticized for reducing the study of social life to a study of the individual. The alternative has been entirely structural, begging the issue that phenomenology raises, the issue of consciousness. The conception of dialectical phenomenology as presented and explained in these pages deals with this issue in a radical way. It treats consciousness not as originating with the individual and mediating the individuals relation to society, nor as an epiphenomenon of external social forces. Rather, it deals with the issue of reductionism by treating consciousness as an ongoing social (historical) accomplishment.