Abstract: The comparison of Plato’s description of the dialectic in his Republic with Marx’s analysis of the value form in The Capital reveals certain common features striking to the reader.How is this possible?The paper discusses the grounds of possibility of such a comparison focusing on two levels:firstly,a ground of historical comparability and,secondly,a ground of systematic comparability.Based on these two grounds,the argument highlights two of the common features that can be found in both thinkers,namely the dialectic as a process of complete separation of the intellect from sense perception and as a process that supersedes the form of hypothesis of scientific thinking.
Key words:real/ideal abstraction;hoarder;money;value form;understanding/reason
Reading Plato’s description of the dialectic in his Republic in conjunction with Marx’s presentation of the genesis of the money-form in the first volume of Capital〔1〕 seems to me a fruitful exercise for a materialistic approach in the field of the history of philosophy.What strikes the reader of such a comparison is that both of these descriptions seem to be modeled on a homologous pattern,sharing certain common features.My aim in this paper is to focus on two of these common features.
Some words are needed for a start as a kind of explanation of this peculiar similarity between two thinkers separated both through their completely divergent philosophical stances (idealism versus materialism) and by an enormous historical time span.The whole case is certainly neither about a supposed Platonism of Marx,mush criticized by Marx himself in several points in Capital vol.1,nor a supposed materialism of Plato,also much criticized by Plato himself based on ontological reasons.These common features,to be presented erelong,appear,on the one hand,in Plato’s analysis of the educational program of the philosopher.As far as Marx is concerned we find these features in his presentation of the value-form resulting in the autonomous expression of money as the first form of value’s realization.More specifically,the Platonic dialectic refers to an arduous process of ideal-mental abstraction consummating in the complete separation of philosophical cognition from the field of sense perception,the field of experience,while Marx’s presentation of the value-form refers to a process of real-material abstraction consummating in the complete separation of an object such as money from the world of commodities.
To make such a comparison legitimate from a materialistic perspective two interconnected grounds are at least needed:on the one hand,we need a ground for bespeaking some kind of historical continuity between the two thinkers i.e.a ground which will function as a historical bridge between ancient Greek society and modern capitalism;on the other hand,we need a ground for demonstrating the specific kind of relation which holds between an idealistic and a materialistic dialectic,a ground which will designate the former as an ideal representation of the latter i.e.what is needed is to decipher the real abstractive process culminating in money as the prototype of ideal abstraction per se.Thus,the first ground makes possible the comparison between different historical horizons while the second ground explains,within the same historical horizon,the form of philosophical thinking as a necessary moment derivative of a real abstractive process.
传统实验教学存在软硬件要求高、设备昂贵且更新淘汰快、设备共享性差、实验时间和空间受限等弊端[3]。网络仿真环境下的模拟实验很好地解决了这一问题，它将抽象的网络概念形象化，把枯燥的网络原理具体化，让学生直观地看到网络协议的行为，了解各种环境或因素对网络的影响。
It is obvious that these two issues cannot be adequately treated here but in a declaratory and perfunctory way.Thinkers such as A.Sohn-Rethel (1973) and W.Müller (1977) had already pointed out not only the relevance of the exchange of commodities for the genesis of the form of philosophical cognition but also had processed its details,though in different ways and degrees.Their analysis is taken here as a given presupposition,especially its main conclusion:intellectual knowledge is not possible without autonomy,but this autonomy presupposes consciousness’ blindness towards the form of money i.e.what Marx had referred to as “fetishism”.Now,as far as the ground of historical comparability is concerned crucial is the following formulation from Capital vol.3:
This then is the class that I described as intelligible...but with the reservation first that the soul is compelled to employ assumptions in the investigation of it,not proceeding to a first principle because of its inability to extricate itself from and rise above its assumptions,and second,that it uses as images … the very objects that are themselves copied and adumbrated by the class below them (R/511e3-7).
Plato’s exact word is “προúργου”,meaning something useful (helpful) for a work to be done.Like every use value answers a partial need by satisfying it,the scientific hypothesis of the understanding answers a partial scientific need.A commentator of Plato,Notopoulos,in a Hegelian interpretation of the platonic formulation “supersession of hypotheses”,remarks that “the movement of dialectic does not destroy them,but their fixation,for they are by nature intelligible.It destroys the hypotheses as absolutes...and envelops their limited point of view into the synoptic horizon of the Good” (Notopoulos 1936:74).Hence,what is destroyed,what is superseded,is not the content of the hypothesis but its form as hypothesis,its form which is still burdened with the sensible.As Plato remarks,
Feature 3:supersession of hypotheses.In this consists the major difference between the philosopher and the scientist and is the distinctive mark of the platonic dialectic.The hypotheses of the other sciences such as mathematics,geometry,stereometry and astronomy,sciences functioning as preparatory for the dialectic,are dogmatic assertions,immovable axioms (R/533d6-7),use values that have not yet been overcome,meaning that they have not yet been mediated from the immediate,from the Idea of the Good as absolute value.The term “use values” at this point is not used metaphorically.It is Meno which help us to understand the use of this term.There is a point in Meno where Socrates explains the hypothetical method using the geometer as an example:
Furthermore,Plato equates the practicing to abstraction to the practicing of death (P/67e) and defines the real philosopher as one that “he will confidently believe that he will find pure wisdom nowhere else than in the other world” (P/68b4-5).Plato seems not to forsake this conception in the Republic where the dialectic is defined as the method of practicing abstraction from the sensible.Immediately before the narration of the myth of Er at the end of the whole work,Plato makes the following comment about the soul:
实现上述目标，应通过水资源体系、水生态体系、水景观体系、水工程体系和水管理体系等五大体系，全面提升城市建成区及规划区水生态建设水平，确保防洪、供水和生态安全，建设“天蓝、水清、岸绿、景美、人水和谐”的聊城新景观。
We can discern four main features in Plato’s description of the dialectic which is called the “coping-stone” (R/534e2) of the philosopher’s educational program:(1) the dialectic as a method requires the complete separation of the intellect from the senses (R/532a6),(2) the aim of the dialectic is to conceive the essence of everything in itself,meaning that the essence must be grasped as separated from the world of phenomena (R/532a5-6),(3) the dialectic supersedes the hypothetical grounds of scientific thought,of understanding,and moves towards the first principle which functions as the final ground of all reality (R/533c8) and,finally,(4) the dialectic rises to “that which requires no assumption and is the starting point of all” (R/511b6).For reasons of space,I will focus on feature 1 and 3.The comparison can demonstrate that Plato,without knowing so,requires of the philosopher to imitate the movement of value which posits money as its final product.
本文以河套灌区为研究对象，针对采用黄河水作为滴灌水源所面临的泥沙过滤、水量调蓄以及高效利用等突出问题，通过研究分析获得如下结论：
But to know its true nature we must view it not marred by communion with the body and other miseries as we now contemplate it,but consider adequately in the light of reason what it is when it is purified (R/611b8-c4).
For the philosopher,the coming of death,signifying the complete liberation of the soul from the body,is as if “to enter into the communion of the gods” (P/82b10-11) or,as it is stated for the soul in the Republic,“as being itself akin to the divine,and the immortal and to eternal being” (R/611e2-3).
大家在思维上有一个误区，认为发展新能源汽车就是为了环保，然而新能源和环保只是从某一个层面来讲有了关联，实质上它们没有必然联系。比如使用纯电动汽车，汽车的排放等于零，但电厂的排放不等于零，仍然会产生污染。发展新能源汽车的本质是受到国家能源政策的指导。在国外，有很多种类的新能源汽车，比如混合动力汽车、纯电动汽车、氢能源汽车。目前，我国很多专家也在讨论，纯电动汽车到底是不是我国发展新能源汽车的终极路线，只能说如今我们还处于尝试阶段。
If we wish to delve deeply in this striking analogy between Plato and Marx we must take into account that the separation from the sensible is fixed in its pure form in the practice of hoarding.The philosopher’s practicing of abstraction as death constitutes the distinctive feature of the Plato’s oligarch:the latter,in order to accumulate value in the form of money,renounces the sensible world of use values,of needs and desires.So it seems that there is a hidden identity between the practice of the philosopher and that of the oligarch,an identity unnoticed from Plato who while criticizes the latter,extols the former.The importance of hoarding lies into the fact that value can be saved on condition of its complete separation from the world of use values and this is exactly what the hoarder and Plato’s oligarch are doing.Regarding the practice of hoarding Marx remarks:
元宵节之后的一天，深圳几个客户来游桂林，海力又要竹韵做陪，一行人游了七星岩出来，竹韵与一个女客户谈论赞叹着七星岩的神奇，桂林山水的灵秀。走到月牙楼的时候，她正要陪客人登楼观光，却被一位从前曾在威力公司工作过的女孩拉住了，她只好停下来跟这女孩说话。
In order that gold may be held as money,and made to form o hoard,it must be prevented from circulating,or from transforming itself into a means of enjoyment.The hoarder,therefore,makes a sacrifice of the lusts of the flesh to his gold fetish.He acts in earnest up to the Gospel of abstention...Hard work,saving,and avarice are,therefore,his three cardinal virtues and to sell much and buy little the sum of his political economy (CW35/144).
Plato describes in similar terms his oligarch as thrifty,laborious,as restricting the satisfaction of his needs to a minimum,as a squalid,seeking for surplus profit in everything,finally as a hoarder (R/554a-b1).This striking identity between Plato’s oligarch,Marx’s hoarder and the philosopher’s practicing of death reveals the criticality of hoarding as the point of complete separation of the ideal world of value from the sensible.It is not obviously about Plato’s discovery of the protestant virtues before the inception of Christianity itself.But is about the way in which the autonomization of value in money and the moment of its realization in hoarding create necessary behavioral patterns engraved in the hoarder as personification of the movement of value.Plato requires from the philosopher to imitate the practice of hoarder as it is idealized in the myth of king Midas:practicing abstraction during life means the persistent restriction of sensible needs and desires,while death signifies the realization of the abstract ideal,the complete independence of the soul from the body in the same way as Midas becomes aware of death when his wish of transforming everything he touches into gold comes true.The consistent hoarder is the philosopher who practices death during his life and finds in death his complete freedom from the body.Death as metaphysics of freedom is nothing less than the metaphysics of hoarding.
I now turn to the presentation of the above mentioned common features.I will first enumerate them following Plato’s analysis of the dialectic and then I will try to present them by weaving each feature of Plato’s argument with Marx’s analysis of the value-form.
Feature 1:Complete separation of the intellect from the senses.The understanding,as a form of intellectual cognition,is still burdened with the sensual.To transform the understanding to reason as the highest form of intellectual cognition,i.e.philosophical cognition,Plato requires that rupture with the senses must be total.If we follow the argument in Phaedo,we can see that the senses play a double role:firstly,they are depicted as the necessary starting-point of human knowledge (P/75a-b) while,secondly,they regarded as a hindrance to the attainment of real knowledge (P/65a10).This is why Plato requires from the philosopher to avoid,as far as possible,the co-operation of the intellect with the senses (P/65c):it is in order to avoid deception on the process of knowing.To achieve this requirement,the philosopher practices himself in abstraction and the dialectic is the method of this practicing.However,this total separation of the intellect from the senses is achieved in the object through the dialectic of the value-form,with the crucial difference that this separation is the work of action,not an intellectual abstraction,but a real one.As Marx persistently remarks:“The value of commodities is the very opposite of the coarse materiality of their substance,not an atom of matter enters into its composition” (CW35/57).What Plato demands from the philosopher is the sine qua non condition of value objectivity.On his behalf,Marx requires from the thinker to acknowledge that the abstraction that he/she conceives is not his/her own work but the product of an act of exchange of commodities.In this act a complete abstraction from the sensible,from the properties of use value takes place.
I mean by hypothesis what the geometricians often do in dealing with a question put to them;for example,whether a certain area is capable of being inscribed as a triangular space in a given circle:they reply —“I cannot yet tell whether it has that capability;but I think...that I have a certain helpful hypothesis for the problem (M/86e5-87a).
There are two implications of this formulation which are relevant for the present argument:(1) as ancient Greek society exhibits a relatively extended commodity production and money circulation in the form of coined money,it is legitimate to suppose that this society takes part in this perversion,and (2) the perversion in question is fetishism,meaning that the social relation is transformed into a thing,namely money.Thus,this formulation answers the need for a ground of historical comparability.
In the case of the simplest categories of the capitalist mode of production,and even of commodity production,in the case of commodities and money,we have already pointed out the mystifying character that transforms the social relations,for which the material elements of wealth serve as bearers in production,into properties of these things themselves (commodities) and still more pronouncedly transforms the production relation itself into a thing (money).All forms of society,in so far as they reach the stage of commodity production and money circulation,take part in this perversion (CW37/813-814).
The form of hypothesis consists in that for the sake of a partial need,the scientist transforms the relative into an absolute,the partial into a universal.This claim of absoluteness is superseded by the dialectic,which associates every partial point of view to the real absolute ground of all being,the Good,thus consummating the separation from the sensible.In this lies the difference between the two forms of intelligibility,scientific explanation in the form of the understanding and philosophical knowing in the form of reason.Thus,the relation between the philosopher and the scientist is not reversible:the former is necessarily also a scientist the latter may not be a philosopher.The former can always descend to the standpoint of the understanding,for the latter to ascend to the standpoint of reason is not always possible.This platonic transition from the understanding to reason presents a staggering similarity to the transition from the second to the third value-form in which money is set as an autonomous thing towards the sensible world of use values.In every “let us suppose”,in every “so much as” of understanding is always contained a complete abstraction from all the rest possible,hypothetical starting points.The defect of this methodical procedure from the standpoint of the platonic dialectic is that it forgets to turn its critique towards the other hypotheses also against itself.Notopoulos has picked up this crucial point remarking that “the limitation of διáνοια (understanding) arises from its lack of self-criticism”,i.e its perspective is private,unrelated and uncriticized (Notopoulos 1936:71).This means that its abstraction is not consummate,remains defective and this is that leads to the dogmatism of the chosen hypothesis.We meet an analogous structural limitation in the second value-from.According to Marx’s presentation every owner of commodity is eager to abstract from the use value of all the other owners,but not also from his/her use value for which he/she claims to stand as the universal equivalent.This is an act of exclusion of a purely subjective,private character as Marx remarks in the Appedix to the first edition of Capital Vol.1 (K1/781-782).Had every owner insisted in his/her private claim,then the exchange process would have collapsed.As Marx remarks:
其中P(Wk|Cj),为模式Wk在电子邮件中的占比，|D|为该类邮件的训练数N(Wk,di)为模式Wk在dt中所出现的次数，|V|为该类特征下对应的所有模式总和。
根据本工程的地质特征和地下壁板桩的成槽要求，选用一台中联ZDG360液压抓斗机作为本工程的成槽设备，最大成槽宽度1.2 m。选用100 t吊机和200 t吊机各一台，其中200 t吊机作为起吊钢筋笼的主机，100 t吊机作为起吊钢筋笼的副机，详见表1。
To the owner of a commodity,every other commodity is,in regard to his own,a particular equivalent,and consequently his own commodity is the universal equivalent for all the others.But since this applies to every owner,there is,in fact,no commodity acting as universal commodity,and the relative value of commodities possesses no general form under which they can be equated as values and have the magnitude of their values compared.So far,therefore,they do not confront each other as commodities,but only as products or use values (CW35/96-97).
Only in the third form all the private claims of absoluteness are superseded and transformed into what they truly are:partial claims mediated by the money form as their universal,absolute ground.Money functions at this point,to paraphrase Notopoulos,as the platonic “synoptic horizon of the Good”.
A final remark:The comparability of these two features seems to validate the assumption that Marx’s value-form analysis can be used to re-interpret the history of philosophy.Further research is needed to substantiate properly such a provisional conclusion.
Notes:
〔1〕References to the works of Plato are from the Loeb Edition (within the text with Stephanus numbers,R for Republic,P for Phaedo,M for Meno) and from the three volumes of Capital from the Collected Works (within the text as CW with number of volume and page number).For details cf.in References at the end of the text.
References:
〔1〕Marx K., Das Kapital,Kritik der politischen Oekonomie,Bd.I,Meiner,Hamburg,1867.
〔2〕Marx K., Capital.Critique of political economy,Vol.1 in:Marx-Engels, Collected Works,Vol.35,Lawrence & Wishart,London,2010.
〔3〕Marx K., Capital,Critique of political economy,Vol.3 in:Marx-Engels, Collected Works,Vol.37,Lawrence & Wishart,London,2010.
〔4〕Müller W.R., Geld und Geist.Zur Entstehungsgeschicte von Identitätsbewuβ tsein und Rationalität seit der Antike,Campus,Frankfurt-New York,1977.
〔5〕Notopoulos J.A.,Movement in the divided line of Plato’s Republic, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology,1936,Vol.47.
〔6〕Plato, The Republic,in T.E.Page (ed.), The Republic,in two volumes,Vol.2,Books VI-X,trans.,Paul Shorey,Cambridge Massachusetts,Harvard University Press,1942.
〔7〕Plato,Meno,in T.E.Page (ed.), Plato IV.Laches,Protagoras,Meno,Euthydemus,trans.W.R.M.Lamb,Cambridge Massachusetts,Harvard University Press,1952.
〔8〕Plato,Phaedo,in W.R.M.Lamb (ed.), Plato I.Euthyphro,Apology,Crito,Phaedo,Phaedrus,trans.,H.N.Fowler,Cambridge Massachusetts,Harvard University Press,1942.
〔9〕Sohn-Rethel A., Geistige und körperliche Arbeit.Zur Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Synthesis,Suhrkamp,Frankfurt,1973.
About the author：Thomas Noutsopoulos,associate professor of Political Theory,Department of Political Science,School of Social Sciences,University of Crete,Greece.His main fields of research and scientific interest are Hegelian and Marxian dialectics,classical political theory and political economy,theories of imperialism.
DOI：10.3969/j.issn.1002-1698.2019.05.019