Marx & Philosophy I & II (Session 4)

Okay, hello everyone. This is Marx and philosophy led by Professor Ray Brassier, session four. And I'm gonna pass the mic to Ray right now. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Okay, so yeah, this is a fourth session. I'm sorry about having to speak last week, but I think we should have… It's a pleasure. The final… yeah, so we're halfway through the course now. But we shouldn't have any more interruptions, I hope. So this week we're going to look at Marx's critique of political economy,

or the excerpts from the text known, you know, the Grundrisse, of the critique of political economy. We want to focus in particular on Marx's methodological remarks on what he calls, there's a very important section called the method of political economy where he lays out I think the crucial, what he basically explains what he takes the critique of political economy to consist in. Okay, so once again, okay, so the handout contains the most important passages I want to focus

on. So Marx is examining the categories used by political economists and he wants to see see whether or not they actually provide a cognitive purchase on social reality, on actually existing social reality. So one of the things that I want to kind of suggest is that the word critique here has a you know a lineage or affiliation that can be traced back to Kant Kant's critique of you know critique of metaphysics if you remember

so the object of chance you know the critique of pure reason is an attempt to lay out the conditions under which the categories of pure thought can have objective purport. In other words, the conditions under which they can actually be about empirical reality. And the critical components of Kant's method consist in explaining how if one abstracts from the relationship between the intelligible or the understanding and sensibility, one

gets the result is illusion. The result is the mistaken belief that thinking and the pure forms of thought can simply grasp the structure of reality as it is in itself. So similarly, I think what Marx is doing in his critique of political economy is suggesting that the categories with which political economists have tried to understand the nature of economic production systematically misrepresent the reality that they are supposed to be about.

They fail to be about the objective domain that they claim to be characterizing because they don't take into account the way in which they are themselves conditioned by the material or what Marx would call the sensual material reality that they are allegedly describing. So that's the basic, you know, that's a quick gloss on the kind of, I think, the significance of the critical dimension of Marx's critique of political economy. So he begins by discussing, well, you know, the fundamental categories of political economy

are, you know, production, exchange, distribution, and consumption. have been taken to be kind of fundamental categories in terms of which every analysis of economic reality unfolds. And what Marx is doing now is he wants to kind of critically examine the objective credentials of each of these categories. So he begins by an account of, by examining the category of production and whether it's possible to talk about production in general so this is the first it's quite a lengthy passage but I think it's important to go through it so this is

quote number one on the on the handout well whenever we speak therefore a production we always have in mind production at a certain stage of social development or production by social individuals. So just a quick gloss on this initial claim. Marx is claiming that what political economists have done is abstracted economic categories that are peculiar to a historically specific mode of production and sought to generalize them is so they they have abstracted features of the capitalist mode of production and the relationship between production exchange distribution and

consumption in the capitalist mode of production and they try to to derive that the features of production in general from the capitalist mode of production and this is you know the first sense in which political economy or classical political economy is dogmatic or ideological for Marx so he continues hence it might seem that in order to speak of production at all we must either trace the historical processes of development through its various phases or declare at the outset that it that we are dealing with a certain historical period as for example as for example with modern capitalist production which as a matter of fact constitutes the proper subjects of this work but also

All stages of production have certain landmarks in common, common purposes. Production in general is an abstraction, but it is a rational abstraction in so far as it singles out and fixes the common features of production, thereby saving us repetition. Yet these general or common features discovered by comparison constitute something very complex, constituent elements have different destinations. Some of these elements belong to all epochs, others are common to a few. Some of them are common to the most modern as well as the most ancient epochs. No production is conceivable without them, but while even the most completely developed languages have laws

and conditions in common with the least developed, what is characteristic of their development are the points of departure from the general and common. The conditions which generally govern production must be differentiated in order that the essential points of difference should not be lost sight of in view of the general uniformity which is due to the fact that the subject and the object remain the same. A failure to remember this fact, this one fact is a source of all the wisdom of modern economists who are trying to prove the eternal nature and harmony of existing social conditions. Thus they say, for example, that no production is possible without some instrument of production,

let that instrument be only the hand. That none is possible without past accumulated labor, even if that labor should consist of mere skill which has been accumulated and concentrated in the hand of the savage by repeated exercise capital is among other things also an instrument of production and also past in personal labor hence capital is a universal eternal natural phenomenon which is true if we disregard the specific properties which turn an instrument of production and stored up labor into capital. So the first error of which Marx is accusing political economists is eternalizing features

of production and features of the relation between production, exchange, distribution and consumption which are actually peculiar to the capitalist mode of production. And hence, so what Marx wants to do is that he wants to say that in order to analyze, he's analyze, he's not simply rejecting the attempt to analyze production in general. He thinks that this is a legitimate abstraction. He says production in general is a rational abstraction because it singles out and fixes the common features of production. But he says the way in which we abstract must be methodologically self-conscious. In other words, we have to

be very careful, we have to pay attention to the manner in which we abstract the features of production in general. And this is what he thinks political economists have failed to do they've eternalized particular features of the capitalist mode of production and attributed them to production in general so what Marx is going to do is to show is to come up with a method of rationally abstracting the features of production but in a way which shows how you know we can in a way

we can reconstruct the features of the general features of a historically specific mode of production which is to say ours the capitalist mode of production and then understand how we can only understand the history of production or the relationship between the capitalist mode of production and previous non-capitalist mode of production if we are conscious of the way in which this historically specific mode of production filters our understanding of previous modes of production.

So the first term, I mean, this is why the expression mode of production is very important here. I mean, and it's peculiar. So Marx introduces this. He says, well, there's production in general. There are historically specific modes of production, but there is no way of grasping the relations amongst these historically specific modes of production from an ahistorical or eternal point of view. And this is what he thinks that the this is the mistake of political economy. So he says we can grasp the features of production in general but only once we grasp the features are constitutive of the capitalist mode of production.

We can only understand the relationship, the difference between capitalist and pre-capitalist mode of production if we grasp what is historically specific about the capitalist mode of production. And this is what it means to be a historical materialist for Marxist, it's to understand how the way in which we grasp the relationship between the past and the present can be by simply abstracting from the present and eternalizing contingent features of the present, but by understanding how we can only, we're obliged to grasp the becoming of the present, the

process through which the present became, through which the capitalist mode of production arose in terms of categories, abstract categories, which have been generated, which are internal to this present mode of production. And this is why Marx will say that the anatomy of the human is the key to the anatomy of the ape. can only understand evolution, evolutionary process. Now he's not saying that modes of production simply evolve into one another in some kind of teleological fashion. He's suggesting we can only understand the relationship between the present and the past and how the

process that led up to the present, if we, not by abstracting from the present, but by understanding how our understanding of the process itself cannot escape the constraints of the present. So hopefully this... so Marx is historical. Marx is combining a process of methodological abstraction with an emphasis on the historicity of modes of production or the features of production. But once again remember if you remember what he said in the German

ideology you know you can't simply appeal you know history is written by men by humans in specific social circumstances and every historical narrative reflects kind of you know ideological interests and you know is determined by class positions so in a way there's no way of getting to history in itself there's no kind of neutral perspective on history but that's not to say that there are not there is no rational understanding of nature of history available to us. So Marx wants to reconcile, he wants to say that we can

have a rational understanding of history and of historical development but only by being acutely aware of what is historically particular about the categories the categories that we use to describe this historical process yes um so it seems like sometimes Marx wants to say so yeah so it's about the autonomy of critical reasoning basically um it seems like sometimes he seems to be

suggesting that critique is genuinely not determined by relation to reproduction, like it's genuinely not ideological, it somehow has its own power. At other times, it seems like he's saying that it's only possible to sort of level a critique of capitalism because the sort of productive force, because capitalism is already coming into contradiction with a new system of relationship production, so that it actually is determined in the last instance in a way because a future system is becoming possible

and is kind of calling from the future or something, you know, through Marx or whatever. So I'm curious about, yeah, that kind of determination in the last instance question. Now, do you mean this expression in an Althusserian sense or in a kind of, you know, Maralian sense? I'm thinking more in an Althusserian sense. Basically, just a question of how... It seems like he's suggesting that a genuinely autonomous critical critique is possible that isn't being caused by the dialectical historical process. Okay. Okay, so this is a very good question.

Okay, so now, Marx, the critique has to be imminent, okay? So Marx will insist, and here he follows Kant and Hegel, just as in, you know, the points, you know, for Kant, the only reason can criticize itself, and only reason can understand, can see the difference between the legitimate and the illegitimate application of its own categories. So, for instance, dogmatic metaphysics arises when reason fails to take into account its conditioning by sensibility and simply deploys its own categories transcendently, beyond

the bounds of possible experience. okay and the result is kind of illusion for metaphysical illusion similarly in Hegel there's a kind of an imminent critique Hegel insists that you can only you know criticize you know Hegel's phenomenological method consists in showing how a shape of consciousness is always structured around you know contradiction which and so long as it fails to kind of to conceptually comprehend or to consciously comprehend its own contradictory nature it will it remains in the grip of this contradiction okay and it's it's so it's paralyzed or

determined by this contradiction it only it overcomes this contradiction by grasping it in thought by conceptualizing the contradiction has to become self-conscious but the point is that there is no Marx esposes imminent critique there is no transcendence or external vantage point from which you could criticize the capitalist mode of production so I think that he insists that his critique of capitalism is an imminent critique but he claims to be able to see the contradictory essence of the capitalist phenomenon which he things political economists fail to see because they rationalize you know they you know because

they think that the structure of capitalism is entirely rational and entirely and is basically that you know the capitalist mode of social organization is you know has simply kind of naturally evolved and develops almost in a teleological fashion this is the way things you know must be and this is it so this is what so much wants to deny that there's anything necessary about the features of capitalist society capitalist existence but at the same time he can't simply jump outside of because of historical materialism, he can simply abstract from capitalist society and capitalist existence

and criticise it from some kind of transcendent or ahistorical vantage point. so in other words the key for mark is that capital itself provides you with the categories that you need to criticize it this is the whole point of the critique of the economy is that what he wants to do is to show her in a way the categories of political economy necessarily misrepresent the reality that they claim to be describing. So he claimed that he thinks that it's not just an accident that political economists eternalize and reify contingent features

of capitalist reality. He thinks it's necessary. And in a way, he wants to show how this eternalization is conditioned by capitalism itself so what he's going to do is to show how by showing how this um this this misrepresentation is necessary then he thinks this allows him with uh the leverage he needs to be able to construct uh categories that truly capture the essence of the capitalist phenomenon. So for instance, categories such as commodity or value or class and surplus value, etc.

etc. So, as we'll see, the starting point for his analysis is that it's not that Marx thinks that he, you know, what is wrong with the capitalist mode of production can't be diagnosed from some previous historical vantage points nor from some completely ahistorical vantage point so what the challenge is to be able to to show how

the reality of capitalist production, the reality of capitalist existence is disguised by political economy but the categories of political economy are the symptoms, are necessarily generated by the functioning of capitalism so that they they stand to it as the as symptom to an underlying cause okay and that means that his task is is diagnostic okay he shows how these categories by trying to you know they try to make something that is actually

peculiar and accidental and seem universal and necessary. So the first thing he's going to do is to show how, is to reveal how what is taken to be universal and necessary is always kind of historical and accidental and then show how there is something, well, come up with an account of exploitation because exploitation is the crucial category, the crucial diagnostic category around which he will develop his

entire critique. And here it's important, as we'll see, to understand the difference between exploitation and oppression. Labour is exploited. So labour is necessary for capitalist production, but at the same time, labour is systematically prevented from realizing its own, you know, proper capacity. And so, if you remember the account of alienation of labor we talked about, so the claim is that under capitalism, there's a distinction between labor power and wage labor, which

is the only way in which the human essence or human nature can manifest itself. And he thinks that this generates a contradiction between the essence of capitalism. needs labor in order to reproduce itself and labor needs capitalism in order to reproduce itself but there's a fundamental contradiction between in a way the interests of capitalism and the interests of labor okay so this contradiction is the key it's it's the it's the crux of

his entire critique. He says that capitalism can't exist without labor, without using and exploiting labor, and labor can't exist without consuming capitalist commodities, but this interdependence is contradictory and is going to generate a crisis. And what's interesting about Marx is that it's a kind of structural analysis. So he thinks that the contradiction is structural and systemic. So he thinks that what drives the US will also cause it to explode.

Now, the problem is that this explosion, you know, the point of which revolution becomes inevitable is, well, it's ambiguous in Marx, the extent to which this is, you know, the contradiction must lead to a kind of an explosion, a kind of a radical transformation, and the The extent to which capitalism can indefinitely postpone the explosion or the rupture by, through various kind of strategies by which it can prevent the contradiction from becoming,

from consummating itself in a break. And that's something that is, you know, well, at least, I mean, it's not clear to me whether, you know, the transition to the next mode of production, communism, is, you know, kind of objectively determined by, you know, the capitalist laws of motion that Marx is kind of articulating or whether it needs to be, you know, it needs a kind of subjective intervention by human agency, you know, the upsurge of the proletariat. And I think in a way the key to understanding, I mean for Marx I think both are necessary,

Yet in a way, the capitalism's necessary overcoming is also contingent in a sense, because it depends upon an intervention, a kind of a human intervention, which can't simply be predetermined. So his critique is imminent because he's claiming to identify, he says that the mechanism which drives capitalist production and reproduction is contradictory.

And the contradiction will lead to the transition to a post-capitalist mode of production. communist mode of production but in a way there's a there's an ambiguity in Marx in a way there's an ambiguity between in a way causal necessity or mechanical necessity and what you could call normative necessity and I wish to think of the two senses and what you know when you say something must happen The must can be the must of causal necessity when we talk about there's a necessary connection

between the cause and the effect. So once the cause exists, the effect must exist or cannot not exist. And the sense in which, there's another sense in which we talk about something having to happen because it is, there's a normative obligation to make it happen. This is the kind of the ethical imperative, you know, you must do this. But here the, I think in Marx there's a kind of almost an equivocation between these two objective and subjective senses of necessity. But it's possible that, it's also possible that it's not a mere equivocation, but Marx

wants to try to explain how they have to complement each other and in a way so that the revolutionary transition to communism can only occur once objective necessity and subjective necessity are brought together and that's you know whether that's how that can be done is part of you you know, the problem. So in response to Hunter's question, there's no autonomy of critical consciousness. So in other words, Marx, and as we're going to see here, there's no sense in which, you know, Marx's own critical consciousness is conditioned by the capitalist mode of production. What he knows about capitalism and what he finds objectionable about capitalism

is in a way necessitated by the operations, the machinations of capitalism. He's not simply transcending capitalism. It's an imminent critique, but it's an imminent critique which claims to be able to see the the hidden essence of capitalism and the exploitative mechanism which is at the heart of capitalism's own reproduction. Okay, so this is the beginning of a response to your question, but I think that hopefully

by the time we've seen the next, when we come to see his critique of Hegel, I think maybe this will become fleshed out a little bit further. And this is the next couple of pages in the handout. I'm tempted to expand more, but I'll just wait. Yeah, maybe we can reconsider this. We can return to this. Okay, let's see. Okay, so now number two, a couple of much shorter quotes now. So number two, if there's no production in general, there's also no general production. Production is always either some special branch of production, as for example agriculture, stock raising, manufacturing,

or an aggregate of these special or specific modes of production. But political economy is not technology. The connection between the general determinations of productions at a given stage of social development and the particular forms of production is to be, will be developed elsewhere. This kind of political economy is not technology. In other words, you can't reduce a mode of production to the techniques, you know, the techniques or the technological modes that are used to realize it.

So although every mode of production implies one or more technologies, you can't reduce a mode of production to its technological implementation or its technological realization. And I think this is another important point to bear in mind in contemporary... this is why Marx is not a technological determinist. He thinks that a mode of production generates new technologies, but it also generates modes of social organization which influence and shape the development of these technologies. But he thinks you can't simply, you can never

abstract a technology from a mode of production and the social relations that are associated with it. So now we move to the relationship between production and distribution. So number three Marx writes, no matter how greatly the systems of distribution may vary at different stages of society it should be possible here as in the case of production to discover the common features and to confound and eliminate all historical differences in formulating general human laws, i.e. laws about the relationship between production and distribution. And in number four he writes, the two main points which all economists place under

this head, i.e. production and distribution, are first property and secondly the production of property by the administration of justice, the police, etc. The objections to these two points can be stated very briefly. One, all production is appropriation of nature by the individual within and through a definite form of society. In that sense it is a tautology to say that property or appropriation is a condition of production but it becomes ridiculous when from that one jumps at once to a definite form of property for example private property which implies besides as a prerequisite the existence of an opposite form is the absence of property history points rather to common property

for example amongst the hindus slavs ancient celts etc as a primitive form which still plays an important part at a much later period as communal property the question as to whether wealth grows more rapidly under this or that form of property is not even raised here as yet but that there can be no such thing as production nor consequently society where property does not exist in any form is a tautology appropriation which does not appropriate is a contradiction in subject to. So this is his response to the claim. So he's saying that all production is appropriation, all production in a way generates property, but not necessarily private property. Private property

once again is a historically specific mode of the appropriation of nature. or it's not production is not necessarily geared towards the production of private property that that's Marx's point and in and secondly in terms of the distribution to protection of gain every form of production creates its own legal relations forms of government etc the cruelty and the shortcomings of this conception lies in the tendency to see only an accidental reflective connection in what constitutes an organic union, an organic

union between production and distribution. So here that the claim is that yes every form of production you know generates a system of distribution and a set of institutions, legal relations forms of government that are designed to enforce this system of distribution. But once again, it's a mistake to think that all production is geared towards the production of private property. The apparatus of distribution need not entail

you know the police, the judiciary, the institutions which are peculiar to the apparatus of distribution under capitalism. That's a simple kind of critical point here. So now moving on to five. So all the stages of production have us have a certain have certain destinations in common which we generalize in thoughts but the so-called general conditions of all production are nothing but abstract conceptions which do not go to make up any real stage in the history of production so here once again he's saying that

it's perfectly legitimate to try to, through abstraction, to kind of arrive at general conditions of general production, general features of production. But it's a mistake to think that these production in general has ever existed. There has never been, there's always been historically specific mode of production with specific features of distribution, circulation and consumption. OK, so now we move...so in number six, so this is another critical observation by Marx about

what he thinks is a kind of a very superficial understanding of the relationship between exchange distribution and consumption the more so he writes the most shallow conception is as follows by production the members of society appropriate which is to say a produce in shape the products of nature to human wants then distribution determines the proportion in which the individual participates in this production while exchange brings him the particular products into which he wishes to turn, the quantity secured by him through distribution, and finally

through consumption the products become objects of use and enjoyment of individual appropriation. So production yields goods adapted to our needs, distribution distributes them according to social laws, exchange distributes further what has already been distributed according to individual wants and finally in consumption the product drops out of the social movement becoming the direct object of the individual want which it serves and satisfies in use production thus appears as the starting point consumption as the final end and distribution and exchange as the middle. The latter has a double aspect, distribution being defined as a process

carried on by society and exchange as one proceeding from the individual. The person is objectified in production, the material thing is subjectified in the person. In distribution society assumes the part of go-between for production and consumption in the form of generally prevailing rules. In exchange, this is accomplished by the accidental makeup of the individual. So, according to this conception, production is determined according to the economists by universal natural laws, while distribution depends on social chance. Distribution can therefore have a more or less stimulating

effect on production. Exchange lies between the two as a formal social movement and the final act of consumption, which is considered not only as a final purpose but also as a final aim, falls properly outside the scope of economics except in so far as it reacts on the starting point and causes the entire process to begin all over again. So Marx is going to criticize once again this traditional understanding of the way in which production, exchange, distribution and consumption are articulated, but he's going to contrast, he says

in a way it's obvious that there's something you know suspicious about the attempt to kind of to eternalize production and to subordinate all the other more all the other moments to such as you know exchange distribution consumption to production but he's saying insisting on the interdependence of production and distribution is insufficient so he's going to insist that there is a sense in which production has a certain primacy but once again

this primacy is historically specific it's peculiar to the capitalist mode of production. So he writes in number seven on the handout, nothing is more common than the charge that the economists have been considering production as an end in itself, too much to the exclusion of everything else. So the claim that all human societies are organized around production, you know, it can be, you know, has, you know, can be criticized from a non-Marxist point of view. The same has been said with regard to distribution. But this accusation is itself based on the economic conception that distribution exists side by side with production as a self-contained independent sphere or it is said the

various factors are not grasped in their unity as though it were the textbooks that impress the separation upon life and not life upon the textbooks and as as though the subject at issue were a dialectical balancing of conception and not an analysis of real conditions. So here what Marx is saying is that he's saying it's illegitimate to separate production and distribution can be no artificially separated as self-contained independent spheres they're into interdependent but nevertheless would he you know he's

going to say that the in the capitalist mode of production production nevertheless determines the mode of this interdependence or the way in which also distribution and consumption will be have features which are determined by the productive process and the point of his analysis of the analysis that he'll development capital is to kind of to understand how to insist in a way on the

primacy of production without simply without generating a metaphysics of production without saying that you know production is some kind of is some primary process around which every human society must be coordinated So he continues in number seven, he says, in terms of exchange and circulation, the result we arrive at is not that production, distribution, exchange and consumption are identical, but that they are all members of one entity, different aspects of one unit. Production predominates not only over production itself, in the opposite sense of that term, but over the other elements as well.

with production the process constantly starts over again that exchange and consumption cannot be the predominating elements is self-evident and the same is true of distribution in the narrow sense of distribution of products as for distribution in the sense of distribution of the agents of production it is itself but a factor of production a definite form of production thus determines the forms of consumption, distribution, exchange, and also the mutual relations between these various elements. Of course, production in its one-sided form is in its turn influenced

by other elements, i.e. with expansion of the market, i.e. the sphere of exchange. Production grows in volume and is subdivided to a greater extent. What Marx is going to insist on is that there is commodity production determines distribution and consumption. And in Marx's analysis then what's really going to be I think you know fundamental or you know original relationship between production and exchange because or rather and we according to the the reading of Marx so-called the value form reading which

you know Michael Heinrich sets out in the little book on capital you can only understand what is historically the specificity of capitalist production by understanding it as geared towards commodity exchange. In other words, production is geared towards exchange, the exchange of commodities and that means that the buying and selling of commodities is what you know ultimately determines the structure of the production process so this is in a way

so the way in which you know production predominates under capitalism is not It's not because what is being produced, it's not because production is entirely autonomous and independent, but because it's precisely because it's commodities that are being produced and the production of commodities is in a way subordinated to their exchange. commodity must be exchangeable, that's the only sense in which production has a primacy

or production predominates in capitalism. So what is peculiar to capitalism is that what what is what capitalism is geared towards is the production of commodities but a commodity can only be produced in so far as it is exchangeable so in a way that the the exchange ability of the commodity already governs its production So I think this is Marx's basic point here. When we continue next week we'll begin, we'll look at his analysis of the commodity form

in the opening of Volume 1 of Capital. So in a way we'll continue this Marx's analysis of the commodity form next week. But now what I want to focus on is Marx's very, very kind of interesting methodological remarks. And this is in the next section of the Grundrissie. He begins to lay out the method for the critique of political economy. And this is what we're going to be focusing on. So in number eight, Marx writes, it seems to be the correct procedure to commence with the real and the concrete, the actual prerequisites.

In the case of political economy, to commence with population, which is the basis and the author of the entire productive activity of society. Yet on closer consideration, it proves to be wrong. Population is an abstraction. If we leave out, for example, the classes of which it consists, these classes again are but an empty word unless we know what are the elements on which they are based, such as wage, labour, capital, etc. These imply in their turn exchange, division of labour, prices, etc. Capital for example does not mean anything without wage, labour, value, money, price, etc. If we start out therefore with population, we do so with a chaotic conception of the

whole and by closer analysis we will gradually arrive at simpler ideas. Thus we shall proceed from the imaginary concrete and less abstractions until we arrive at the simplest determinations. Once attained, we might start on a return journey until we finally came back to a population, but this time not as a chaotic notion of an integral whole, but as a rich aggregate of many determinations and relations. Okay, now, just to make the link between what we've been discussing so far. So, the question is, what is the starting point for the critique of political economy?

With what does political economy, what is the real starting point of political economy? Marx is criticizing, he says, traditional political economy, for instance, privileges production over you know exchange distribution and consumption but it does so by eternalizing you know features of the capitalist mode of production what it does is it illegitimately universalizes features of the process of production that are actually peculiar to the capitalist

mode of production. Then he says it's not enough then simply, but nor will it suffice simply to say, to kind of to denounce this privileging of production by saying that production can only exist as part of a you know of an organic whole in connection to exchange distribution consumption he's saying because our understanding of these moments the moments of the totality of the economic totality will will be inadequate unless we can analyze these what are effectively these abstract categories properly. So whether you're talking about production, distribution

exchange or consumption, he says well you don't really know what you mean by these abstractions unless you understand the way in which they are both conceptually interdependent but also materially interdependent. But it's crucial not to conflate conceptual interdependence for material interdependence or the logical for the real. So for instance, the reason why Marx will begin is, will begin capital with an analysis

of the commodity form is that, why does he not begin with production or distribution or consumption? Well, he begins his analysis with the commodity form because he thinks the commodity form is the clue to the structure of production. So you can't understand production or the way in which production determines distribution and consumption unless you understand that production is geared towards commodity production and that a commodity is exchangeable. so what is a commodity a commodity is something that is exchangeable for

something that can be bought and sold but this you know this is not kind of you know intuitively apparent you in order to understand this to understand how the commodity form is is you know an understanding of the commodity form is necessary for an understanding of production, you need to be able to articulate these abstractions properly. The abstractions with which political economy works must be properly connected,

and the relationship between these abstractions must be properly understood. So the point he's making in number eight is that, for instance, if you begin with something like population, the category of population is an abstract. The concept of population is a composite, not a simple. It has component parts. so in order to understand you can't understand what a population is unless you decompose it into its component parts but then you have to understand how the ways in which these parts are interconnected to constitute the concept

of a population this is why mark says if you if you simply start with population okay and if you think if you take population as you as the starting point for your analysis of an political economy you will have what he calls a chaotic conception of the whole of the social totality because you don't understand the way in which population itself is a complex and not a simple category and therefore if you don't understand the internal structure of the concept of population you don't understand how the concept of population

connects to the other connects for instance to production and distribution you don't understand you can't reconstruct the whole properly if you have you know a purely and you know an imaginary understanding of the nature of population and and the role it plays in the social totality so what so the next step then Marx makes a distinction between what he calls the concrete and thought and the concrete in reality. Okay so what he's going to say is and I think this is absolutely

decisive for understanding the critique of political economy. Marx's point is that what is concrete in reality cannot be intuited. There is no kind of we don't have any kind of immediate access to what is concrete in reality. We have to, we can only access what is concrete in reality by achieving what Marx calls what is concrete in thought. So we have to construct what is concrete in thought and only through this construction can we then try to grasp what is concrete in

reality so he continues so he's distinction between two movements a movement of decomposition of a complex abstraction into its elementary components you know so population is a comp is a complex abstraction and it can be decomposed into more elementary abstractions so first of all you have to you have to know how to decompose a complex abstraction into its component parts and then you have to know how to recompose these parts, not only to reconstruct the, you know, this initial, the parts which were the starting point,

but also to know how to reconstruct the relationship between the part and the whole of which it is a part, between population and economy and society as such. So there are two movements, okay? So there's a movement in which, you know, we move from, you know, We try to kind of, you know, arrive at something simple, but the simple element, what we thought was simple turns out to be complex. so we have to understand its complex character to be able to understand how

this part is connected to the whole of which it is a part so this and this is the difference between having a chaotic conception of the whole and an ordered a rational understanding of the whole, you know, as what Marx calls a rich aggregate of many determinations and relations. So number nine. Now the former method, the method of decomposition of, you know, the complex part into its simple

elements. This is the method which political economy has adopted in the past at its inception. The economists of the 17th century, for example, always started out with the living aggregate population, nation, state, several states, etc. But in the end, they invariably arrived by means of analysis at certain leading abstract general principles such as division of labour, money, value, etc. As soon as these separate elements had been more or less established by abstract reasoning, there arose the systems of political economy which start from simple conception such as labor, division of labor, demand, exchange value and conclude with state, international exchange and the world market. The latter is manifestly the scientifically correct method.

The concrete is concrete because it is a combination of many determinations, i.e. a unity of diverse elements. In our thought it therefore appears as a process of synthesis as a result and not as a starting point, although it is the real starting point and therefore also the starting point of observation and conception. By the former method the complete conception passes into an abstract definition. By the latter, the abstract definition leads to the reproduction of the concrete subject in the course of reasoning. So now this is, you know, my gloss with the italicized bullet points below here, it's my

attempt to kind of characterize what Marx is saying here in terms of, you know, the distinction between concrete and thorn the concrete in reality. So there are two processes, okay? First the decomposition of the abstracted or represented concrete into its elementary components which are the simple abstractions. By the way, so the Marxist terminology is very important. He talks about, I mean his his vocabulary is Kantian, he talks about the manifold, he talks about synthesis, and he talks about intuition and representation. So the claim, in a way, the unscientific or

metaphysical method of political economy works by, you know, in a way it takes, it mistakes the representation of the concrete for the concrete. It has a merely abstract concretion or a represented concretion that it mistakes for a real or actual concretion because it's not aware of the movement of abstraction which generates the concrete in thought. So the first process is the decomposition of the abstracted or represented concrete into its elementary components,

or the simple abstractions. The example given above was the example of population. decomposition of you know population as an as an abstract concretion into its elementary components or its simple abstractions the second process is the recombination of these simple abstractions into into a concretely determined abstraction the totality of determinations as concrete in thoughts And I think that for Marx what is represented as concrete in reality is an indeterminate whole. Whereas what is reproduced as concrete in thought is a determinate totality.

And the movement from abstract representation to concrete reproduction is logical and not material. So this is the method of the critique of political economy. In other words, to be able to diagnose in a way the way in which political economy cannot but represent, because it's not aware of its own, you know, that what it's doing is merely representing the whole or the concrete. what it does is that it represents what is concrete in reality as an indeterminate whole which is to say as a kind of as a pseudo-organic unity as a kind of and this is important because

this is why Marx was criticizing a kind of superficial wholesome it's not enough simply to say that production and this and production and distribution are interdependent in some kind of organic sense because in a way the wholeness the nature of the interdependence remains unelucidated in other words you don't have a proper conceptual understanding or scientific understanding of the nature of the interdependence between these moments of the whole so this is when the result is a merely an indeterminate whole or a merely abstract in other words you you confuse, you know, what you take to be concrete reality is itself nothing but a series

of conceptual abstractions. But the scientific process and the method of the critique of political economy is in a way the movement, in a way it begins with these abstract, you know, the abstract representation of the concrete to a concrete reproduction, the concrete reproduction of the social totality as a determinate, you know, as a logically and a conceptually determined totality. And this is the concrete in thought. In other words, you have to construct the concrete in thought in order to be able to

grasp what is concrete in reality. If you don't do this, you confuse, you know, you misrepresent the concrete in reality through something which is merely a conceptual abstraction. And this is, I think, and in this sense this is why, again, there's an affinity between Marx's critique of political economy and the critique of metaphysics. What he's saying is that political economy is metaphysical, not only because it eternalizes historically specific features of capital's production but also because it claims an intuitive

or immediate access to what is concrete in reality and in so doing because it doesn't account for its own representation of this reality, it simply generates an imaginary or indeterminate whole, a chaotic whole. Now the key thing for Marx is that the movement from abstract representation to concrete reproduction is logical, not material. So the method of political economy, you start with the abstract

representations, the categories of political economy, and then you recompose them to concretely reproduce the social totality. The capitalist totality must be concretely reproduced in thought by using the abstract representations, its abstract representation in political economy as the starting point or in a way as the symptom. So what I'm suggesting is that, and this is returning to Hunter's question about the imminent critique, about how is this critique of political economy possible?

It's because Marx, if Marx thought that he could simply kind of see the essence, you know, of capitalism or see through the illusions, the ideological illusions of capitalism, which would be fuddled political economists, then he would be a metaphysician. Okay. If you think you can simply penetrate the veil of appearances to see the underlying essence, you're a metaphysician. but the whole point is that there is no intellectual intuition that allows us to penetrate the veil of appearances and see the thing in itself or the essence so in order to grasp you know the underlying you know the essence the underlying reality of capitalist society we have to begin we have to understand

the relationship between you know appearance and essence and we have to understand how the essence manifests itself in the appearance which is to say in the categories of bourgeois political economy but in a way but also masks itself it hides behind them and and this is I think Marx is kind of fantastic kind of insight to understand how the categories of bourgeois political economy persist are you know are merely abstract representations of concrete reality but there's but and therefore they necessarily misrepresent this reality

but if you if you can understand you know how and why they necessarily misrepresent this reality then you can construct the category that allows you not only to diagnose this misrepresentation but to actually map the structure the real concrete structure of the capitalist totality so so now we so this is it so but the key thing is not to confuse ideal movement and the real active production okay the movement of the logical reconstruction

of the concrete and thought is not cannot be confused with the the reputless production and reproduction okay so so in in 10 uh marx distinguishes his method from from from hegel's he says hegel fell into the error therefore of considering the real as a result of a self-coordinating self-absorbed and spontaneously operating thought while the method of advancing from the abstract to the concrete is but the way of thinking by which the concrete is grasped and is reproduced in our mind as concrete. It is by no means, however, the process which itself generates the concrete. The simplest economic category, say exchange value,

implies the existence of population, population that is engaged in production under certain conditions. It also implies the existence of certain types of family, clan, or state, etc. it can have no other existence except as an abstract one-sided relation of an already given concrete and living aggregates so the key distinction then is between you know the the logical movement through which one reconstructs the concrete in thought or the concept of capitalism, the concept of capital and with its component parts which are, you know, use value, exchange value, commodity,

you know, surplus value, etc., etc. and the real movement of social production and reproduction. uh and he thinks you know marx thinks that you know hegel's idealism conflates these thinks that ultimately dissolves the distinction between the concrete and thought and the concrete in reality now just as a a point um it's it's important here that um precisely because the concrete in reality cannot be intuited or kind of you know simply represented

the question remains of how do we understand the relationship between the concrete in thought and the concrete in matter how do we know that our theoretical analysis of capital is actually adequate, actually kind of you know properly describes and characterizes this capitalist reality. And here you have to remember what Marx says about in the critique of Feuerbach, Marx says that practice is the the relevant criterion of adequacy for the truth of a theory so

you know theories you know are validated in practice so in a way I think there can't be there is no theoretical criterion that allows you to adjudicate the difference between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality and in a way this is you know the Hegelian trap if you try to look for another theoretical criterion of the difference between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality you'll invariably you will all you'll generate another process of abstraction another series of abstractions and then the Hegelian

conclusion seems inevitable that there is no real difference between the real and the ideal or the concept and the actuality. You know the real is rational and the rational is real. Marx's critique of Hegel is simply to say that this gap, you know, the hiatus between, you know, the concrete in thoughts and the concrete in reality is established in and through practice. So I mean basically it's revolutionary praxis I think, you know, or class struggle in a way

that verifies the difference between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality. So in other words that Marx's analysis of capitalism and his uncovering of the, you the essential contradiction in relation of exploitation that is at the heart of capitalism can only be verified in and through revolutionary practice. And I think this is, otherwise, then Marx in a way can't you know convincingly rebut the Hegelian objection which is to say what when you

talk about the difference between you know what concrete difference can you invoke in order to ratify the distinction between the concrete and thought on the concrete in reality okay All of this is the reality, the real activity of capitalist production and exchange and the way in which they, you know, subsume all aspects of human existence, according to Marx, This is not something that can be... this only becomes perceptible through this process,

through this method of the critique of political economy and the abstraction which is fundamental to it. perceive the ways in which capitalist, you know, human existence is dominated by real abstractions under capitalism by following this process of methodological abstraction. You can only perceive abstractions through abstraction and not through any not by appealing to any kind of stratum of concrete immediacy okay no

I've realized I've been going shall we make the pause I was hearing pause here yes let's let's have a pause here so shall we pause and then have a little discussion or yeah let's have a pause let's have a five minute break and then have a you know we should you know people who have a quick discussion um about this so yeah let's say shall we come back in uh five minutes which is to say uh 25 well it'll be 25 to 7 for me so So I'm not sure what time that will be for everyone else. Yeah, here is half past 5 p.m.

Okay. Okay. So, yeah, five minutes. Okay. So see you in five minutes. See you in five minutes. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. here we are okay um okay um yeah um okay so before we have a kind of a discussion i just

want to clarify I mean the to clarify what I it's actually on the handout okay there's another quotation number 11 just there's quotation 11 from Marx and then the the italicized bullet points just underneath number 11 are says it's my summary of this kind of a crucial distinction okay So the difference between what Marx wants to point to is the difference between what he calls the real social subject and a mere thought aggregate. Or rather between, you know, the social totality as a real social subject and society, for example, as an abstraction.

as an abstract or category used by political economy. The point is that the distinction between the real social subject and the thought aggregate is not a difference in thought. The difference between what is really concrete and what is concrete in thought can't just be a difference in thought. but distinguishing between the concrete and abstract in thought and the concrete and abstract in reality doesn't presuppose a metaphysical or transcendental difference between thought and reality this is exactly what Marx takes Hegel to task for or philosophers in general he thinks that philosophers abstract thought

thinking is something that human beings do and he thinks that philosophers Others take thinking to be the kind of the preeminent human activity, and then they kind of reify it as consciousness or self-consciousness, and then they try to explain all of human existence in terms of thinking or consciousness. And Marx wants to say that in a way, then the relationship between thought and reality or consciousness and reality or subject and object becomes mysterious and perplexing. But what Marx is saying is that thinking, of course human beings think and it's something that uniquely kind of characterizes them, but he thinks it's a mistake to abstract

thinking as this kind of preeminent activity, as if it's kind of the fundamental human activity. Because if you do that, you simply mystify the nature of thinking by abstracting it from its relationship to other human activities and to the sociality of human existence. And then you have the problem of trying to reconnect thinking to reality. if you understand thinking as something that is part and parcel just one way of characterizing what human beings do as a human practice then you don't have to reconnect thought and reality no but remember this is not to say but mark is

not an impulse so that the things Marxism materialism is a practical He says that the key thing is to understand that human beings are doers, are always engaged in doing things as opposed to merely contemplating or representing. But the various modes of human doing, the activities in which human beings are practically engage are precisely not immediately accessible to consciousness or thought. In other words, we're always engaged in doing things but we don't spontaneously know or understand what it is we're doing.

So what is concrete in reality for Marx is human practice. In a way, the capitalist totality is generated by a system of human practices. But Marx's point is that we don't understand what it is we're doing on a day-to-day basis and what we don't understand is that we don't understand what we're doing when we exchange commodities. The practice of commodity exchange is in a way what prevents us from understanding what it is we're actually engaged in doing on a day-to-day basis.

So this is why the distinction then between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality, it's not metaphysical or transcendental, it's a distinction between thought and practice, But Marx's point is that there is no spontaneous or intuitive understanding of practice, or at least this is what I'm insisting upon. I mean, you know, I think a lot of Marxists disagree with this, but I take, you know, the point is that the nature of human practical activity is not, and especially under capitalism, in the regime of commodity production.

This is precisely what is hidden from us. We engage in practices that are not transparent to us, or practices whose essential nature is hidden from us, which is why it can only be grasped by constructing the concrete in thoughts or by the critique of political economy. So this is why I misspoke when I said earlier, I emphasize kind of revolutionary practice, but that's actually, I mean, that's, I'm kind of confusing or kind of muddying the water. The basic point is that, you know, at the heart of what governs commodity production is the practice of exchange, of buying and selling.

And this is the fundamental practice at the heart of capitalist society, but this is precisely what we cannot understand so long as we remain at the level of intuitive understanding or spontaneous understanding. and we need the critique of political economy in order to be able to understand what we are actually doing when we buy and sell commodities. Okay, that's just the point I wanted to make here. So I think now we should have a discussion. We should just... Any points or questions anyone wants to raise?

I have a few questions, but if anyone else wants to go first, they can, because I already asked something before. Okay. So I thought what you were saying about... Yeah, correct. So, okay, so the thing about this gap between concrete thought and concrete practice, that's something that, according to Marx, able to surreptitiously provide, and the possibility of practice or revolutionary practice as being what relates concrete thought to concrete practice,

that's still you said revolutionary practice before but then you just walked back on that I'm curious about that I guess let me see let me ask the question in a coherent specific way like it seems like so any kind of would that practice that revolutionary practice be is that is it production is it labor like it seems like any any social practice would still need to either be reproducing the current motor production or or be uh

transitioning into future motor production and it's still sort of determined by this kind of materialist history. But it seems that we also want this revolutionary practice to be free in some sense that transcends that. Or, you know, is it a form of experimentation almost, a kind of testing? I don't know. I wish I could ask that question with a little more clarity but I think maybe okay it's I think I think I created the confusion or

I made things by talking by immediately bringing in revolutionary practice you don't need to understand that the distinction between concrete and thought and concrete in reality what is concrete in reality is practice is the system of human practices through which capital capital produces and reproduces itself okay that's it's quite simple all I mean is simply that's what keeps the whole you know machinery kind of going is you know what human beings do and what is the fundamental things that human you know human beings do in a capitalist

society they buy and sell commodities they also produce commodities but only you know some of them one class produces commodities the other doesn't produce but kind of owns a means of productions and is engaged in buying and selling commodities to kind of you know to accumulate capital so in a way the distinction all you need to kind of you know to grasp this kind of basic distinction in concrete and so on concrete in reality is this distinction between you know understanding a concept of the concept of capital and

and the reality of capital. And the reality of capital for Marx is that it's a system of human practices which are not transparent to themselves. And this is where the idea of real abstraction is important because what is at the heart, you know, real abstraction is at the heart of Marx's critique of political economy. because you say what is a commodity? A commodity is something entirely abstract. It's something that's made to be bought and sold. And the distinction between use and exchange, which is articulated at the beginning of his analysis of the commodity,

is that commodities can be used, but they are not produced to be used. they're produced to be exchanged. Their use value is subordinated to their exchange value. So that the usefulness of a commodity is always incidental or ancillary to its exchangeability, which is essential to it. But what constitutes its exchangeability? Well, its exchangeability is its value, and its value is measured in terms of its price. So money is the measure of value.

Every commodity has a price, okay, and the money measures the magnitude of value of a commodity. So the point is that both the value is an abstraction, money as a measure of value is an abstraction, but also the substance of value for Marx, which is socially necessary abstract labor time, it's also an abstraction. So what he's saying is that capitalist society

is a system of abstractions that are held together by human practice. And in a way it's our practice that generates these abstractions. So the point, the difference between a real abstraction and an ideal abstraction is that an ideal abstraction is something that is generated in thinking. If you think about society or goodness or wholeness or justice, these are kind of ideal abstractions. They are generated through an intellectual operation. Marx's point is that what is peculiar about capitalist existence is that it is governed by real abstractions. Money,

value, commodities, exchangeability, the market, etc. And these are abstractions that are not the products of ideation, they're not simply generated through intellection, they are generated through practical, through what we do, not through what we think or know. and but it's because we don't know what it is in a way we it's because we don't know what it is we're doing that you need to go through this you need this

you know very sophisticated to understand what it is we're actually doing and then to understand how we can change it so in other words the key is is that once we understand what it is we're actually doing when we buy and sell commodities and what we're doing in a society that is governed by commodity production and exchange, only then are we in a position to change, to transform our activity. Because once we actually realize what it is we're doing, then we can begin to try to change what it is we're doing. and that's the point at which you know revolutionary practice kicks in but Marx's point is that we have to it's not until we can understand what it is we're

actually doing you know every day both when we you know when we can you know make commodities and when we exchange commodities only then are we in a position to kind of to do something about it and actually you know transform this society so the key so to understand you know to understand how our you know our concrete material reality is coordinated in a way is governed by the production of abstractions is structured around abstractions which are secreted through practice not through theory only then can we you know do something about it you know change society so

that's the basic I think practice is fundamental whenever you know I think what is genuinely concrete for Marx's practice but the points is that you know practice is concrete in the in the sense that it's exists in space and times, it's spatial temporal, but the materiality of practice doesn't imply its transparency to consciousness. In other words, we're not necessarily aware of what it is we're actually doing when we're working or exchanging commodities. This is very simple. He says we don't know

what we're doing, either when we're working, why do we work? We work, we have to sell our labor to be able to make the money that will allow us to buy the commodities we need to be able to stay alive, to clothe and feed ourselves. But then we also, we can only kind of live in order to go on to sell our labor again, to be able to keep buying more commodities. So the whole, our entire existence is a kind of distortion or a kind of, you know, the nature of what it is we're actually doing, you know, on a daily basis, you know, when we wake up, go to work, buy things, sell things, it says we don't, is, you know, the nature of what

we're actually engaged in doing is hidden from us. And Marx's theory is trying to reveal to us what it is we're actually doing. But he needs these abstract categories to be able to identify the real abstractions that govern our practical, concrete existence. I'm not sure if that helps or hinders. Yeah, it helps a bit. Hello? Hello? Hello, this is John Paul. Yes. Hi, Ray. Great stuff. Hello, everybody. This is great.

You were quite clear about this last week in Australia. These are some crystal clear points. I think I get the distinction between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality. We don't have access to objects as they are. and thought we have to have we have to perform this task of abstraction to have to have concrete to have the what did we say the concrete in thought which gives you access to concrete in reality I think just here's a quote I transcribed some of your talk from Australia which the concrete and thought is trying to map is a system of social practices.

Social practices, these social practices are not intuitive and accessible. We don't have spontaneous or privileged access to them. So we have to understand that the way we have the way we have to kind of break them is to get to them is indirectly and we can get to them through the we can get to the concrete in thought through abstraction now I am have a just a question regarding us though in color capable of knowing about ourselves just is do we have in the same

senses regarding objects and do is there a sort of Marx Marxian breakdown of self-identity and race and color at this level um hello yep hi um actually it cut out i i missed the last sentence um i apologize i want to know if i can get from uh the difference between the concrete and thought and the concrete in reality all the way over to race and color, meaning how concrete in this language is race and color?

Is it as, are we performing an, when we regard the concreteness of our race, our racial makeup, our background, are we performing a type of abstraction as well? Meaning, is it on this level that I'm able to doubt and question the concreteness of our race and our backgrounds? Well, I mean, it depends. On one level, race is a category, okay? And race is a category that has been socially generated under historically specific conditions

and used to kind of to categorize and classify human beings. So racial distinctions are, you know, for Marx, like they're not real. They're not concrete. They are mere abstractions, which unfortunately have an ultra concrete effect because people, you know, believe in them. In other words, so, you know, any abstraction can have very concrete consequences, but only insofar as it influences people's practical activities. So racism, race is an abstraction, but racism is a very real practical thing. It's very concrete. But the reality of racism doesn't imply the reality of race.

So just because racism is concrete and all too concrete and kind of unavoidable and destructive, surely that is not evidence of the reality of race. The point is that race itself is a species abstraction, species I mean a kind of a complete construction, which is obviously politically... The racial identity and it is of my in I mean I think along these lines what I'm reading and what I'm getting from our talk is That where we meet is at this level of abstraction if we're going to move forward any sort of revolutionary fashion

We're going to eventually Let go of this idea that our racial may Is concrete I just yeah my question was whether or not this was direction the right way to take a connection between the critical philosophy we're doing now and let's say a certain people who are doing work in American history, sorry the black cultural studies if you like. Well, I mean, obviously people experience, insofar as people are subjected to racism or discrimination on the basis of their ethnicity or sexuality or whatever,

then they would need, you know, these abstract categorizations have very, you know, nefarious practical consequences. They have concrete practical consequences. But it seems to me that, so, and in a way the point is that you would need theory to be able to diagnose, you know, theory is there to help you not mistake, you know, the abstract and the concrete, you know, not to mistake something that is in fact, you know, a spurious and, you know, an abstraction that is being used by, you know, by

oppressors, you know, or for those who want to dominate and subjugate you know, members of the population, you know, you shouldn't be kind of, you know, reified and used as a kind of something that exists kind of, you know, exists in and of itself. So the point is that the differences between, you know, what are the… Marx's point would be that the way in which, you know, he's not saying that you don't… People who are subjected to concrete forms of oppression, you know, are obviously can

understand it's all too clear how they're being oppressed and you know excluded and dominated but in a way if you want to be able to in a way to understand how all these different forms of oppressions are interconnected and are systematically interconnected he says you can't simply remain at the level of concrete immediacy and you're going to need the resources of abstraction to be to you know diagnose what is pathological about certain abstractions okay such as race for instance but even something like you know you could say

even like gender okay so the point the point about Marx and Marx is again that he doesn't think abstraction per se is bad he says it's neither good nor bad he says it's only bad in so far as you know if you're dominated or subjugated by abstractions whose you know his generation you don't understand then obviously that's the condition under which you know that's those are bad abstractions but there are in a way you need there are abstractions that allow you to diagnose the pernicious consequences of those you know bad abstractions like the market or race and those are those are the good

abstractions okay you can only so you can only combat abstraction with abstraction not by and you know, in a way not by, again, it's not the kind of the immediacy of experience, the immediacy of the experience of oppression is not to be discounted, but it's a starting point, It's a starting point and it doesn't simply, you know, Marx would think it would be an empiricist mistake to think that experience alone suffices to give you the resources you need to be able to combat and defeat these modes of oppression.

Okay, the categories that are used to kind of subjugate and dominate human beings. This is why you need to kind of, you need to be able to kind of understand how what is happening to you, and to others like you, is part of a kind of, you know, is a manifestation of this kind of impersonal structure, which is multifaceted and which isn't just, can't be encapsulated from a single point of view or from the vantage point of a simple, one type of oppression or one type of domination.

I don't know if this answers what you were trying to ask. Jean-Paul, is that the... Jean-Paul, was that... do you want to respond? I can't hear.

I think you need to turn your microphone on. Okay, would anyone else like to... Can I ask a question, Ray, or make a comment or something? Yeah, yeah. Is anyone else going to jump in? Turn my camera off. Yep, go ahead. I think a couple of things. I read the sections, but I totally agree with what you're saying,

but I didn't really get a clear sense of where Mark was saying this. Is he saying it somewhere else? It's highly abstract, the sections where he's talking about this concrete in thought, concrete in practice but the other one i was going to make is like um you know how much of this is you and how much of this marks i guess that that sort of aspect of the question but the other thing i was going to ask is like isn't it isn't it not revolutionary practice that sort of um um verifies the difference between the concrete and thought and the concrete and practice isn't it uh the science like marx thinks he's doing science right so isn't it isn't it wouldn't you say it's

like actually science or something that that that bridges this that bridges this difference and that revolutionary practice is like something else maybe or um and also the other the other like how is this relevant to sort of you know what's the concept that like consciousness raising or that you know is this connected to that you know like um you know the marxist idea of sort of like raising consciousness going around sort of explaining uh is this is that the sort of revolutionary practice is that like the extrapolation of this in revolutionary practice or something mm-hmm okay let me try and respond okay so this you know this is very okay the

represent this is this is my gloss you know my attempt to interpret this marches distinction between concrete and so and actually he doesn't say he never says concrete um he doesn't say concrete in practice and he actually he actually I think only says concrete in reality or concrete reality once he talks consistently about the concrete and thoughts okay and he's contrasting it to something else but he never actually kind of he does once or twice use the expression concrete reality or reality but he never talks about concrete in practice. I'm just saying that when he talks about

what is concrete in reality I think he means practice. Now in terms of the difference between the you have said why isn't science that determines you know that grasps the difference between the concrete in thoughts and the concrete in reality the problem but there's a problem here and and if you understand Marx's critique of Hegel it seems that science unfolds science is a theoretical activity and science involves theorizing you know and representing okay and abstracting so So science, you know, the method of science involves, you know, constructing the concrete in thought.

But what is concrete in thought? How do you establish a correspondence between what is concrete in thought and what is concrete in reality without appealing to something else that is concrete in thought? In other words, what is the non-cognitive or non-conceptual criterion for adjudicating the difference between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality? In empirical science, it's like observation and experiment, I would say. Okay, but Marx is doing a critique of political economy. what observations and experiments are going to allow him to to make this distinction well yeah

yeah this is where my question is going to yeah i mean would it be like the experiment is like the seizure of uh something or like is the experiment revolution um no i think there's a problem you know marx talks about the empirical okay i think that there's a systematic there's an there's been a kind of a you know there's an empiricist misinterpretation of what Marx means by empirical remember the empirical means the experiential empiricism is a doctrine about the nature of the empirical if you bear in mind the distinction between the empirical and empiricism

as a theory about the nature of the primacy of the empirical in the acquisition of knowledge okay Marx is not an empiricist okay it's clear he's not an empiricist he doesn't think that you can go and observe the value form or the commodity form or class struggle and this is and I think of all his critiques of, you know, first of all his critiques of bourgeois political economy involve, you know, also a critique of its, he thinks that empiricism always smuggles in kind of, you know, ideological presuppositions, you know, and if you think about contemporary economics, you know, what's, you know,

it's always appealing to kind of you know you know indisputable you know empirical data but think about you know think about how data is you know kind of you know selected frames interpreted so it's he's not he appeals to the empirical he thinks the empirical is important but he's not an empiricist because he thinks that there is no simple you can never simply appeal to the truth of the empirical as if it was kind of you know self self validating or self demonstrating so the whole point is that his critique of political economy is not conducted on the

basis of empiricism an appeal to in indubitable empirical facts okay none of the none of the points that he's making are empirical facts he uses he marshals empirical facts in a way to get into substantiate his theory and they spent ten years in the British Library you know accumulating kind of you know historical and economic data but in a way his theory is not simply he doesn't generalize on the basis of empirical data that's just not what and you know and capital is incomprehensible if you trying to kind of understand its arguments in that

way and unfortunately the reasons people who dismiss marks as a charlatan you know dismiss him precisely because they think you know what he's doing is kind of simply unintelligible because the way in which he relates theory and evidence is kind of from an empiricist point of view so this is why I think sorry go on well what about an innocence of something more like a transcendental empiricism or like a social experiment of trying something out to then see if you know what happens when an act is performed that's motivated by Marx's critique of political economy?

Like, would it be experimental in that sense? Yes. You're right to say that, you know, kind of, I mean, you know, revolutionary transformation would be, you know, would be the validation or the verification of the theory. But that's not the nature, But the distinction between the concrete in thought and the concrete in reality is not yet about the truth of the theory. First of all, he's establishing a distinction. And in a way, he's establishing a distinction between theory. Theory is something that develops the concrete in thought.

The goal of sea rising is to achieve the concrete in thought, because only the concrete in thought can allow you to map what is concrete in reality. But what is concrete in reality is actual kind of social practice. social practice and then the you know the transformation in a way the transformation of practice requires the you know the mediation of theory you can't transform your practice adequately unless you have the theory unless you've understood his kind of his critique of capital but then the

question of truth no look don't people who think that mark you know there's plenty of people who think that Marx has been refuted you know by his own criteria so that the failures to the fails of revolutionary practice the failure to kind of achieve communism is a refutation of Marx's entire theory so there are plenty of you and that's the common view now the common view is that you know there's something wrong with Marx's theory even if you take him on his own terms because it cannot be realized in practice or the attempt to realize it in practice the experiments have failed okay now I think it's more

complicated than that because you know you know it's not clear that there have been any adequate experiments that the attempts to realize the theory you know in the 20th century came sufficiently close to the requirements of the theory to count as falsifications. I think as well, even that the model was developed in Russia and that they seem to have sort of failed at capitalism as well, well does that not disquared it as um as an experiment maybe i'm just um the capitalism

seems to be as disastrous there and um almost as well yes it's it's a particularly it's uh well i think capitalism goes more or less brutal but it is a particularly brutal species of capitalism that has emerged since the collapse of the Soviet Union. But from Marx's own point of view, first of all, you can't have communism in one nation. And also, communism is the abolition of the state, the abolition of private property and the abolition of class. there was a Russian, the USSR was a state, private property was maintained and unfortunately

there was a clear, there was a disavowed but still clear class stratification. So it's not too difficult to see why the Soviet Union just simply fails to satisfy any of the required, failed on all three counts. It didn't achieve any of the things that a communist society is supposed to achieve. The more interesting question is why and how it failed. I think most people, you know, I don't think anyone denies that it failed, you know, the debates are about how and why it failed. But the usual, but now people who say that the experiment, the attempt, of course, the reactionary criticism is to say that the failure is inevitable because the theory is hopelessly mistaken.

The theory is just wrong about capitalism and everything else. So therefore it's unsurprising that the attempts to realise it also fail. And here I think, in a way, an intelligent Marxist must kind of, can't you know Marx is not a pragmatist okay pragmatism says that you know the truth of a theory is simply kind of you know ratified it if it works it's true if it doesn't work it's false now Marx is is I don't think Marx is a pragmatist in this sense he thinks that you know a theory must

generate some kind of transformative practice, but he thinks that the, you know, in a way the shortcomings of the theory, you know, can't simply be, you know, also have to be kind of adjudicated on theoretical terms and there are lots of questions about the adequacy of Marx's analysis on its own terms. So in a way the more you emphasize the primacy of practice,

The more you want to say that the theory is only good as a practice it generates, in a way the worse off Marx is. Because not only is there a paucity of revolutionary practice now, but it seems it's harder to conceive of, I mean, communism seems more distant now or less achievable now than it was a hundred years ago. So I think if people who want to defend Marx, such as me, such as myself, must do it by developing new theoretical resources, not to insulate the theory from practical refutation, but to say that the relationship between theory and practice is just more complicated.

and that there's more, you know, it's, you know, the truth of the theory can be adjudicated through at one level, or through one dimension of practice alone, i.e., you know, class struggle. I mean, I think class struggle is real, I think class struggle is something that is actually going on all the time. But I think it's harder now, you know, because it's a decomposition of the kind of, you know, the traditional working class and so on, it's harder now to have a clear sense of the global state of class struggle.

But I think it should absolutely be maintained. I think if you give up on that, if you think that there isn't capital for Marx as a relation, the relationship between those who own the means of production and who are constantly kind of amplifying, accumulating more and more capital, wealth and power, and those whose lives are governed by those people. And I think that that relation is incontrovertibly kind of actual. I also think that the capitalists have been winning for the past 50 years, clearly. They've been winning the struggle. So I think it's important to say that they've been winning and to try to diagnose why they've been winning.

and then to try to understand how the tide might be turned. I think that would be the kind of how I would respond. On that note, you mentioned earlier briefly the idea of rising above the distinction between normative necessity and real necessity. which was a very interesting idea as a way to sort of answer the question of, you know, whether it's, whether we're, Mark seems to imagine capital just kind of naturally producing a new mode of production,

or whether there's this important role for theoretical critique and intervention on the sort of subjective side and but yeah but that's that's such a week can you say what you mean by rising above the distinction between normative and necessity okay this is it's you know someone I think, so Marx is infamous, okay, or at least, you know, so Marx said that to the extent to which he's taken to be a historical determinist, who's saying that, you know, capitalism will collapse, will be destroyed by its own contradictions. So in other words, the replacement of capitalism by communism or something very close to it

is somehow inevitable and must happen through some kind of mechanical necessity. But it's clear that if that's the case, that revolution is mechanically determined. and is inevitable simply kind of you just have to wait for things you know just wait for the contradiction to lead to the kind of the definitive the crisis you know the terminal crisis of capitalism and then you know the you know the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist motor production will happen necessarily. Now that's kind of, you know, implausible and I think that it's clear

a careful reading of Marx suggests that, you know, Marx, you know, couldn't, you know, seriously have believed that. He couldn't seriously have believed that you know capitalism would simply you know that this the supersession of capitalism was you know predetermined in this way and the reason is because there's so much about because in order to have that kind of determinations you need causal causally exceptionless laws okay you need to have some kind of something analogous to laws of motion and although Marx says he's trying to uncover

capitalism's laws of motion, I mean he's speaking very kind of loosely and metaphorically because he can't, the predictions he makes about the eternal crisis are themselves, they're generic, okay In other words, he's not predicting an observation. You carry out a scientific experiment because once you have the law, the law allows you to construct a model of reality in which you can test for the manifestation, the causal manifestation of this law. and this is how you're supposed to be able to kind of you know to either

verify or falsify a theory depending but philosophy of scientists discovered that actually no scientific law has ever been verified in this way or falsified in this way either so it turns out that you know scientific theories are you know A popular view is to say that scientific theories are corroborated, experimentally corroborated, but they're not verified or falsified. with with Marx you'd have maybe something you know you have something analogous to corroboration in

other words you have empirical circumstances which can be you know whose analysis you know corroborates the theory but there's nothing about any empirical circumstance that can definitively verify or falsify the theory because the theory doesn't doesn't kind of formulate any anything like an exceptionless law an exceptional law as kind of you know conceived and kind of Newton's laws of motion so Ray, can I ask a question?

Yes. This is Rochelle, by the way, I'm just a different account. So when we're discussing real abstraction and ideal abstraction, in an ontological sense, are we understanding abstraction for Marx as we're understanding ideology? Are the two words essentially being used in the same way, or is abstraction a facet of ideology for Marx? Yes. So, yes, abstraction means, when he talks about the concrete in thought, when he talks about, in that passage we discussed, he means intellectual abstraction or conceptual abstraction.

He means abstraction as something that is the result of an intellectual operation. But for him, for Marx, ideology is the domain of abstraction. and those are abstractions which masquerade as concrete. So think of the markets, okay? Think of the ideology of the market. People talk about market forces. There's no such thing as market forces. This is a complete kind of fiction, a kind of ideological construct.

but nevertheless because people believe in them and people act accordingly in a way they kind of the the seem to have a kind of an efficacy but Marx also thinks that there are you know the abstractions that he is trying to construct are what he goes there they're they're rational okay They're rational and they allow you to understand something. They allow you to understand reality or the way the world actually works. See, when we come to capital, what is peculiar about capitalist reality is that, or think of money.

Okay, here's an example. Money. So money is a real abstraction. Money is something, if you try to understand what money is and how it works, it turns out to be something that is entirely abstract. But the abstraction of money is not generated in and through the mind. It's not an ideation. The abstraction of money is not the result of ideation. It's something that is produced through practice. It's what we do. And most of us use money without understanding or having to understand what it actually is.

So I think that's... So for Marx, you have to be... He uses the word abstract in three different, I think, registers. There's one, so there are ideological abstractions like the markets or even kind of society or the community. These are things that are supposed to be concrete but are actually abstract in a bad way because they masquerade as concrete and because the way in which they've been generated is hidden. okay then there are you know the what he calls the you know the abstractions that you know of

the concrete in thought these are good abstractions because they allow you because they are logically articulated and you understand you understand how they're generated and how they are connected to another and and they give you a kind of a cognitive purchase on reality they allow you to understand reality but the reality that they allow you to understand just to say capitalist reality is the reality that is itself structured around abstractions such like money and money the relationship between you know money and commodities as you know there are the two forms of

appearance of value money commodities and value these are real abstractions they are things that are not you know that can't be grasped at the level of empirical experience you know if someone asks you to point to money okay think about this like if you point to money okay you can't point to money you can point to a rep is something that represents money the coin or the note is a placeholder it's a it's something that represents money but you can't actually point to money itself nor can you point to value you know which is

what money is measuring and the point is that the good abstractions of the concrete in thought are what allow you to grasp the real abstractions which control our existence under capitalism. So there's There's ideological abstraction, which is an abstraction that masquerades as something concrete. It's a represented concretion, which is actually a false concretion or an abstraction.

That's ideology. Then there are what he calls the form determinations of the critique of political economy, such categories like commodity, value, surplus value, exploitation, etc. These are the good abstractions, the logically articulated abstractions that allow you to grasp social reality, and that allow you to grasp that this reality consists of these real abstractions, things like money or the market or the nation or the state. These are all real abstractions that structure our existence,

but that in a way political economists want to say are real or necessary, but Marx wants to say that they're generated by what we do, but they have no independent existence. They're not metaphysical essences or metaphysical realities. They are secreted by our practical activity insofar as we misunderstand what it is we're doing. And his abstractions, his categories, are there to allow you to see what it is that you're actually doing and to change it That makes sense.

I think, sorry, the echoed. My apologies about that. So are we saying now that ideology and logic are distinct? Something that, because we say that something that is concrete in thought, it's logically articulated, has logically articulated the abstractions that, you know, the ideological abstractions, the two are different. can manifest itself materially,

if we go back to the distinction you made earlier between the logical and the material, but it can't manifest itself logically. Its ideology isn't logical, necessarily. And I muted you, Ray, I'm sorry. Yes, so in one sense, again, logic is, so there's a sense, logic is a good sense for Marx. that when he says the concrete in thought is logically articulated, so it means that the abstractions hang together and are mutually determining, so as in the book, in his theoretical work. So when he's writing capital, there's a logic to his analysis and the mode of presentation,

the way in which he unfolds his categories has a kind of a logical structure. No, but he thinks ideology also has a logic, but the logic of ideology is in a way is based on has to be diagnosed because in a way it's based on so well for instance what is an ideology says that something is necessary that something must be so it claims that there's a kind of a logical necessity to say to the free markets or competition

Okay, and Marx, on one level Marx is going to say, no, there's no logic, there's no necessity here at all. This is entirely contingent and historical. So part of what Marx wants to do is to expose the speciousness of what ideology claims as logical. He wants to show that things that ideology pretends are logical are not logical at all. But then, Marx thinks that there is a logic to the illogic of ideology, the illogicality of ideology,

the way in which ideologues try to eternalize or essentialize contingent historical determinations is not accidental, it's not entirely arbitrary, it's itself necessitated by social reality. There's another point at which Marx says that kind of, when he's criticizing Hegel, he thinks that logic is the money or the currency of idealism. there he's saying that you know the mistake of idealism is that idealism tries to kind of render

different things commensurable and homogeneous by in and through conceptual abstraction and he thinks that that kind of logic is it's kind of bad or well not bad but he just thinks it's a it's the mistake but once again because it doesn't understand well first of all it's he thinks that you know reality itself doesn't have a logical structure that's why he's a materialist but he thinks that it can only be understood using the resources of logic and theory and abstraction and that's what he's he's trying to do so basically he says that um you need um You know, you need the logical structure of the concrete in thought to be able to understand

the illogicality of the concrete in reality. The way in which capitalism reproduces itself is, well, it has a, you know, it's intelligible, an intelligibility and a kind of dialectical logicality to it but it's not logical in the sense you know in the in the ideological sense in the sense of being necessary or you know or eternal so yeah so once again i mean marx is difficult because there's always um you know he always uses um you know terms are used of different

balances in different contexts and the you know that term um is used um so logic has both you know a good sense and a bad sense okay he says it's a mistake to think that reality is logical the logical structure it's a mistake to think that you can't use logic to expose the illusory reification of logic you know that he says that you can use logic to diagnose and expose he can believe that reality is itself logical What role do you think? What role do you think?

I didn't catch that. Do you mind repeating the question? Sure. Sure. am i echoing do you hear an echo when i'm talking okay um what this is kind of a broad question but what role do you think that uh contemporary developments in logic and mathematical logic have to play in um rehabilitating marxism you're muted you're muted i realize that's a broad question When Marx uses the term logic in this, he means philosophical logic.

He doesn't mean formal logic. I mean, he's writing before formal logic as we know it existed. But he means kind of Hegelian logic or speculative logic. So he means logic in a non-formal sense. There are people, there have been kind of Marxist logicians or mathematicians, certainly there have been several kind of Marxist mathematicians, and in fact Grotendieck, I believe, is a Marxist and one of the important figures in the development of category theory, I believe. So there are very, very interesting connections between Marxism and the formal sciences, but

they're indirect, they're not direct. Unfortunately I'm not sufficiently competent in logic or mathematics to say anything very informative about you know the connection but I'll do I would say that it's against those people who say there is a tendency in critical theory especially post you know post Frankfurt School's critical theory to almost a kind of to you know to reduce all formalization all kind of logicization or of mathematicalization to reification, to think that that's all kind of part and parcel of the logic of commodification. And I think that that's a mistake. I think it's a really,

you know, and it kind of fuels a kind of an antipathy towards the resources of formalization formal abstraction which I think has had very bad consequences. So I think there are all sorts of you know potentially interesting connections between Marx and the formal sciences and he you know in his work I mean he did stuff this was brought up at the beginning and that Marx's you his mathematical notebooks, he did work on the differentials and Marx was a gifted mathematician

and apparently generated some kind of new and interesting results as far as the understanding of differentials and integration goals but because I'm simply incompetent, you know i simply lack the competence to kind of say anything informative about that um there's a comment here yeah there's a comment the famous philosophical debate between lenin and bogdanov was precisely about constructivist and objectivist reading of marx and even though i tend to agree with the constructivist version of bogdanov i still cannot see marx as a constructivist Can you quickly explain what you mean or can you specify what you mean by constructivism here?

What Bogdanov meant? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Yes. Who would have an echo? Wait a second. Okay, so the debate between Lenin and Bogdanov, I don't know if you are acquainted with it. It was about the difference between the revolution and class struggle and the way of understanding capitalism as a product of a certain praxis and understanding capitalism as having an inherent logic.

because Lenin was a strict Hegelian and he thought that you cannot understand capital without reading Hegel's logic, which is a quite controversial statement and I don't agree with it. But Bogdano, which was an engineer and was a Bolshevik during the 10s, the time where Lenin wrote the famous pamphlet that was called Materialism and Empiricriticism, proposed a constructivist reading of Marx in the sense of something that is constructed by practice in both the criticism of capitalism, the revolution,

and the movement that creates a different society. He even said that the proletariat is God-creating, is creating a God out of the revolution. I cannot hear you. Ray, you're muted. My sympathies would lie with Bogdanov because I think it's a mistake in a way to hypothesize capital. like you know one of the debates we'll see so for Marx capital is it's a relation and a process it's the valorization process which is a process through which you know money is converted into

commodities and then into you know more money or you know the extraction of surplus value from commodity production so this this kind of a capital a self valorizing value is something is what Marx calls the automatic subject becomes an automatic subject which came to which all you know kind of human activity is subordinated but I think and you know values theorists in particular these kind of proponents of what the so-called value theory analysis tend to kind of you know favor this this accounts which I think is correct except I think it's a mistake

to think I think that the the value form the valorization process is still conditioned by practice and I think it's not you know however it's not absolutely autonomous in other words it still requires human labor to be able to you know to to exist and human labor is presupposes human practice of human practical activity so I think it's implausible to simply to hypostatize capital as a thing in itself so I think I mean Marx calls an automatic subject but the point is that it's not, and even, you know,

as we'll see kind of the Marxist talk about capital positing its own presuppositions, but it does value posits its own presuppositions, you know, in the form of, you know, fixed and variable capital, in order to kind of, you know, to fuel to propel the barbarization process, But I think at every stage this all presupposes human practical activity. So I don't think... So I think the objectivity of capital... Marx talks about the spectral objectivity of value. Value has a spectral objectivity, which means to say that it's not substantial, it's not a substance.

So it's something that is secreted in and through human practice, but also through the kind of the alienation, self-alienation of human practice. So I think it's both a mistake to think that capitalism can't simply be abolished by subjective fear. if it's going to stop for instance as people like you know Zizek have been saying for a long time it doesn't need you to believe in it to keep going okay the fact is and it's precisely because it doesn't depend upon our conscious attitudes or beliefs it depends upon activities which are unconsciously molded and determined um so it has a kind of you know it has a kind of object

a binding objectivity but this doesn't make it some kind of something that is independent or something that is you know some you know a substance existing you know in and of itself um okay there's two i mean i'm i'm afraid i'm gonna have to go soon but there's two more questions here by artem so artem's question is i referred to specifically philosophy of mathematics and logic in a proper mathematical sense as anti-Platonism of mathematical identities. I apologize for the confusion. Yes, constructivism in the philosophy of mathematics is, you know, is anti, it claims a kind of mathematical entities are, you know, constructed, you know,

it's anti-Platonism, it doesn't think, you know, mathematical entities don't exist, in and of themselves. They are constructed, not discovered. And in the philosophy, again, I have to remain agnostic because I'm not a mathematician. I don't know enough to be able to take a position on the philosophy of mathematics. But I think, but I assume that a Marxist would not be a Platonist and would not think that mathematical idealities exist independently of the mathematical practices, of the practice of mathematicians who construct

them. So I would assume that a Marxist would be, I might be wrong about this, I don't know, I would assume that Marx's mathematicians would tend more towards constructivism. And finally, Danny has a question. Would you see Marx's critique in regards to the relationship between abstract concrete as something borrowed from Hegel's work on this issue, namely his essay, Who Thinks Abstractly? Yeah, I think that, yeah, clearly, I think that despite his, you know, his constant and sharp criticisms of Hegel, Marx remains broadly Hegelian. In other words, well, I think he really relies his, I think Feuerbach's critique is decisive for him.

But I think also that Marx, yeah, I mean Marx doesn't think, Marx is Hegelian in that he thinks that you can't separate the absolute, There is nothing that is absolutely concrete or absolutely abstract in itself. To be a Hegelian means to understand that everything is both more or less abstract and concrete at the same time. There is no such thing as absolute concretion or absolute abstraction. And in fact, everything is a mediation of the concrete and the abstract. Which is why Marx doesn't think that you can simply kind of appeal to a dimension of pure concretion.

And so which is why the sensuous domain he's invoked, he's appealing to, can simply be, it's not empiricist in this sense. It's not the kind of sensory immediacy invoked by empiricists. then the hegelian critique you know that that would just you know you know be quickly kind of you know demolished by a hegelian so i think um i do think that marx remains hegelian um you know methodologically um okay i'm afraid i have to go um i'm afraid uh yeah i have to go now so um I'm sorry.

Half an hour. Half an hour. Thank you so much for going so long. So long. That was amazing. You're amazing. Can you reactivate your audio, Ray? Yeah, thanks. Look. So yeah, look forward. So next week's speech. I'll see you next week. okay okay thank you thank you bye