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Вестник Челябинского государственного университета. 2019. № 5 (427).
Философские науки. Вып. 52. С. 10—18.
УДК 140.8 DOI 10.24411/1994-2796-2019-10502
ББК 87.2
ECONOMIC CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN IDEALEMA: AN ANALYSIS OF K. MARX'S WORKS
A.B. Nevelev
Chelyabinsk State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia. filos@csu.ru
A. Ya. Kamaletdinova
Chelyabinsk State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia. allakamaletdinova@rambler.ru
Economic consciousness represents a conjugation of an economical mental form with real economic relations. In economic relations, an active evolutive role belongs to associated parties who are elements of the economic reality itself. A mental form is a relationship abstracted, in various degrees, from associated parties and determined by an individual's energetical capacity, i.e. an activity-oriented ability. An idealem is the methodologically conjugated consideration of mental forms and relationships. For instance, in the historically emerged theories of surplus value a mental form is expressed by scholars of political economy (mercantilists, physiocrats), and relationships — by real participants of economic relations (peasants, proletarians, bourgeois). An idealema, as a methodological construct, provides the mutually critical consideration of relations and associated parties.
Keywords: relative independence of consciousness, idealema, economical consciousness, value, user value, rent, capital, mercantilists, physiocrats, surplus from alienation, commodity, money, labour, relative form of value, equivalent form of value, the historical, the logical, economic mask, theories of surplus value, material basis of consciousness, conjugation of consciousness and relations.
Very significant — from a methodological standpoint is an analysis of "the Napoleonic ideas," which is performed by K. Marx in his work "Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte" [The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon]. No specifically-historical consciousness of the epoch of bourgeois revolutions acts as an independent element of the analysis. All essential moments of social life are presented in an idea, as Marx takes it, whereas a leading point of the evolution of ideas is presented by the development of a certain form of ownership.
"The Napoleon's ideas" came from a parcella. "All "the Napoleonic ideas" are those of an undeveloped and youthfully cheerful parcella; they are meaningless for an antiquated parcella, nothing more than a hallucination of its mortal agony, words that became phrases, spirits that became ghosts" [4, p. 213].
An objective mental form which withdrew the specificity of a basis of consciousness (of a parcella) is grasped here both from the side of incipiency and from the side of transiency. It is clear that the quintessence of Marx's methodology — establishing the conjugation of an objective mental form with a basis of consciousness: and an arisen idea is associated with a basis (with "a youthfully cheerful parcella") and a dying idea is associated with a basis (with "an antiquated parcella"). Each step of the analysis here is verified by way of referring to the specifically-historical practice.
If one tries to single out the methodology used here — in a general philosophical form — then
the idealised object in question is revealed, in our judgement, as a result of the application of this methodology. What else is demonstrated by K. Marx in his analysis of "the Napoleonic ideas" if not the relative independence of consciousness — mass-scale and at the same time individualised concepts of a whole layer of people, their social attitudes, beliefs, preferences, prejudices, half—comprehended ideals and social acts of behaviour related to them? An advantage of such methodology consists in that K. Marx fractionises a unified whole, the consciousness of the specifically-historical epoch of the development of France into such units and blocks which retain properties of the whole in their main essential features. K. Marx does not operate with consciousness first dissected from its basis and then returned to the latter. Such a dissection is inorganic interference that disrupts the life of consciousness. K. Marx's unit of analysis "provides reference both to empirism and to available means of an analysis" [11, p. 308].
L. S. Vygotsky wrote: "we would think that a transition to an analysis of another kind is ... a striking and turning point in the whole doctrine of thinking. We might denote the latter as an analysis that dissects a unified whole into units. Under a unit we mean such a product of an analysis, which, unlike elements, possesses all the main properties inherent to the whole and which represents some further un-realisable living parts of this unity" [1, p. 15].
In our case, the integrity of an idealised object is characterised by a unity of an objective mental form and a reflection over its bases. The dissecting-away of the objective mental form from its basis deprives it of life inherent to the whole. Thus, K. Marx's resorting to a specifically-historical form of private property, to a specific form of private property and to a specific form of the social division of labour [3, p. 3] represents a reflection over the basis of "the Napoleonic ideas". This reflection immediately offers a clue to the dissection of such an object as the comprehension of an epoch in the object's development.
A decisive step to penetration into the consciousness of an epoch is the fixation of a material basis of this kind of consciousness By K. Marx: "A harcella, a peasant and a family; next to it is another parcella, another peasant and another family. A bunch of these units [the underlining is done by the authors of the present paper] forms a village, and a handful of villages — a department" [4, p. 207]. It is an objective mental form representing such a basis that determines "the Napoleonic ideas", whereas the objective destruction of this basis leads to a transformation of an objective mental form (correspondingly, ideas) into nonsense. An analysis of consciousness and its relative independence is doomed even to a greater deal of nonsense in case of some principled assumption which takes intervals of abstraction beyond permissible limits.
A unit of an analysis of consciousness in the lat-ter's relative independence is determined by the objective differentiation of a basis of consciousness. Such specific bases are, for example, feudal property, capitalist property, etc. So, an individual private property that preconditioned a relation of exchange, determines the specific character and the specificity of exchange as an objective mental form (the specificity of economic consciousness).
Thus, the content of an idealised object has its specificity, although the former is close to that of a idea as a concept. While an idea is a unity of a concept and the reality, an idealised object representing a phenomenon of the relative independence of consciousness is a unity of an objective mental form and its specific material basis. An objective mental form can be summarised in a concept, depending on a level of development, and it can only determine pre-conceptual forms (a perception, a presentation).
A new content of an idealised object requires a special concept and a new term for its designation. Considering the proximity of the new concept to that of an idea, we call it an idealema.
An idealema is, on the one hand, a designation of a fundamentally stable set of thoughts and social feelings of humans, which is generated by a homotypic material basis of a mode of their life ac-
tivity and which is intended to assert and validate this mode. And, on the other hand, it is a means of performing the most adequate, as it seems to us, analysis of the relative independence of consciousness of a specifically-historical epoch. An analysis of the relative independence of consciousness according to idealemas as units of integrity permits one, to our opinion, to correctly state and theoretically solve a problem of studying the relative independence of consciousness as an organic whole, in a unity of its aspects.
Concepts by means of which problems close to ours are solved arise in different areas of knowledge. So, a new notion of "socialema" acts as an active methodological tool in social linguistics, which is defined "as a social substratum of language", a language team, in the framework of which some speech interaction in a given language or dialect is implemented, and as a certain community of people who communicate in the same language" [2, p. 7]. The content of this new concept orientates knowledge in the same direction as an idealema — to a more thorough study.
"A basis of an idealema", "a relative form of an idealema" and "an equivalent form of an idealema" are its aspects as an idealised object which synthe-sises in itself an objective mental form and a basis of consciousness. The relative and equivalent forms, as has already been noted, are a result of the polarisation of an objective mental form. In the relative form of an idealema, a mode/scheme of an individual's active relation and activity is summarised, which is determined by a basis of an idealema. In the equivalent form of an idealema, a result of an individual's active relation and activity is summarised, which is determined by a mode of activity.
A basis of an idealema, its relative and equivalent forms form together its structure. Some inner "anxiety" is objectively inherent to an idealema as a holistic unit of an analysis, which determines its life. It is a unity of opposites. A relation of contradiction/internal tension exists between its basis and a polarised form. In its basis, an idealema is rigidly defined by the place of an individual in a material specifically-historical developing process. A continuous change is intrinsic to a basis. A polarised form, on the contrary, is conservative, fixing a certain invariant of changes. As "a figure" of these changes, it contains an aspect of independence from them and is objectively transferred and extrapolated from one change to another.
It is important not only to understand the structure of an idealema, but also how to operate with it. A theoretical operation with an idealema as an idealised object is determined by this internal contradiction. An idealema is a dynamic reflection of a developing process, and since it necessarily involves
reflection over its basis and self-renewal in accordance with the latter's development, it is constantly aimed either at the future, being the latter's prediction, or at the past, becoming a way of the latter's theoretical reconstruction, for example, based on the material of economic consciousness.
A great deal of literature is devoted to economic consciousness [10]. Economists, historical scholars, sociologists and, finally, philosophers take part in the discussion of its problematics. There is no need, therefore, to get into a discussion of both empirical facts and many theoretical issues which are raised by the public consciousness of the modern epoch. Economical issues in themselves, including the history of economic concepts, are only of interest to us in so far as they help us, in continuation of K. Marx's studies, trace the formation and evolution of economic consciousness, in particular, that of the bourgeois class, in the context of a general philosophical problem of the relative independence of consciousness. It is this consideration that explains the following two circumstances.
Firstly, we only contemplate the period of the development of bourgeois economic consciousness, when ideologists of bourgeoisie would attempt (like discoverers of new continents) — themselves and boldly — to reveal causes of people's wealth and poverty and — themselves (and sincerely) — to formulate deep-lying foundations of economic policy (which, as they thought, was conducted by the whole society). These ideologists unwittingly expressed interests of certain strata of the bourgeois class. It is this period of the formation of bourgeois economic consciousness that interests us in the first place, but just from the point of view of the logic which so un-consciently brought them to the discovery of the secret of capitalist accumulation. It is the more or less deep revelation of this mystery, terrible and final for bourgeois consciousness, that means bourgeois ideologists' departure from "the logic of the reality" and characterises the rapid transition of the independence of bourgeois consciousness to a stage of transiency. We are no longer interested in modern bourgeois economic consciousness just because it became dependent. It grew dependent on an narrowly understood class interest, on political consciousness (a conscious and unconscious deception and the manipulation of the consciousness of populace). Since the remnants of the relative independence of bourgeois consciousness do not interest us, logically aligned history of birth and death appears to be important for a philosophical analysis, that is the most general borders of the relative independence of consciousness, and a logic of the birth of a new type of the relative independence of consciousness in the course of the
transiency of the relative independence of bourgeois consciousness.
Secondly, we only consider an ideological (rational) expression of an idealema (the mass-scale representedness of an objective mental form in its conjugation with a material basis of consciousness).
K. Marx wrote: "A political economist (and a capitalist: generally, we always mean empirical dealers [the authors of the present paper: this is underlined by K. Marx], when we refer to political economists who are their scientific conscience and their scientific being)" [7, p. 130]. He adheres to this methodological attitude, in particular, in his work "Theorien uber den Mehrwert" ("Das Kapital", der vierte Band) ["The Theories of Surplus Value" ("Capital", Volume IV] in which K. Marx repeats the theoretical part of "Capital" in a historical form [6, p. 9]. Therefore, the "Theories of Surplus Value" is a valuable material for an analysis of the relative independence of mass-scale bourgeois economic consciousness on the basis of idealemas.
A metamorphosis of an individual's property forms a basis of idealemas provided that economic consciousness acts as a material. This metamorphosis is determined by his or her place in a specifically-historical system of the social division of labour. This property constitutes some means which are at his or her disposal and which eventually determine his or her subjectivity. Correspondingly, the poles of a polarised form of an idealema are as follows: a relative form of an idealema is some knowledge about modes of an economic activity on a given basis of an idealema; an equivalent form of an idealema is some knowledge about a result of a given mode of an economic activity. The evolution of the content of an idealema is carried out in the form of the extrapolation of knowledge about the stated economic aspects to the economic reality.
A prerequisite for the origin of a bourgeois idealema is the universal development of exchange. This development leads to the incipiency of a general form of value as "a common cause of the whole commodity world" [5, p. 76]. All commodities (commodity owners) are "excluded from a universal equivalent form" except one. A universal equivalent form "socially accretes" with gold as a commodity and turns into a money form of value, into a money equivalent as a pole of a commodity owner's idealema, an equivalent pole (an equivalent form).
In a full value form where a special equivalent form corresponds to an expanded relative, the quality of equivalents is withdrawn by their quantity in the form of unverified infinity. In a money form of value, the number of equivalents is in turn abstracted. A commodity owner is aware of his commodity
as the otherness [Anderssein] of a money material. Wealth which is in fact "a huge accumulation of commodities" appears in a converted form in minds of commodity owners of this period — in the form of a money material. "One has the impression that a given commodity becomes money not because all other commodities express their values in it, but vice versa, that they allegedly express their values in it because this commodity is money" [5, p. 102].
The mass-scale mercantilist consciousness of the period of assigning a value of a universal equivalent to gold finds its expression in theories of wealth and its accrual and in concepts of mercantilists. "Mercantilists shift a centre of gravity towards the qualitative side of the expression of value, to an equivalent form of a commodity, which finds its complete expression in money" [5, p. 70]. In history, two stages in the development of mercantilism are well-known: early mercantilism (a monetary system) and developed mercantilism which looks for some means of enrichment in an active trade balance. Early mercantilism reflects a "stupid" miser's superstitious worship of the quiescent (money) entity of value.
A content of the basis of a mercantistic idealema and the corresponding base of its extrapolation in this case is a property of comodities. A relative form of a niggard mercantilist's idealema and, respectively, an extrapolated method of an economic activity, is a refusal of consumption (giving up an act of the realisation of money following its acquisition). An equivalent form of an idealema here is an increase in a money material over the existing one due to abstention from consumption. An equivalent form corresponds to a measure of extrapolation of a given idealema.
For a miser who is a capitalist "inter se", abstinence from consumption is productive, he approaches a surplus value yet "from below". An idealema of a commodity owner weighs upon his mind, for whom the procurement of a money material by way of selling his commodity is a vital matter. A miser, "a chrysalis" of a capitalist appears when a metamorphosis C — M — C [commodity — money — commodity] is broken at a money stage and money treasures detain a value in its universal form for a more or less long time.
"But money is itself a commodity, an external thing that may become a private property of every human. Social power thus becomes a private power of a private individual" [5, p. 143]. Money as a social force which serves private purposes is a historically arisen, a fundamentally new basis of an idealema, a basis with a new content.
A social necessity which requires that money should perform their intermediary functions makes a miser get "wiser" and use money as a means of its self-expansion. This objectively determines the logic
of a transition to a proper bourgeois idealema of a moneylender and a merchant.
Whereas "a stingy knight" practiced abstinence from consumption as a relative form of an idealema (a substance of his existence as a miser), a moneylender and a merchant consume money for the sake of its expanded reproduction. A money activeness is a merchant's intermediary activeness, but the matter looks different from the position of a merchant. Commodities (commodity owners) act as necessary intermediaries for him in a process of the self-expansion of originally advanced money in a metamorphosis of M — C — M' [money — commodity — money '].
A miser proceeds to money from a commodity, and a merchant — from money to a commodity. Accordingly, a relative form of his consciousness and an extrapolated mode of an activity is M — C — M'. And equivalent form of an idealema is M'. That is to say, the purchase and sale of a commodity is an extrapolated mode of an activity within the framework of a merchant's mercantilistic ideal and a profit derived from alienation is a measure of extrapolation.
M — C — M' is a universal formula of capital to which an objective mental form of bourgeois economic consciousness and, therefore, all concepts of bourgeois political economy are ultimately reduced and which is their concentrated summary.
A surplus value in its "dazzling" form is an organising centre of bourgeois consciousness, but this is just an equivalent aspect, a result which has abstracted modes of a bourgeois economic activity. In it (that is in the result which withdrew the activity of bourgeoisie), all differences of this activity are extinguished. Meanwhile, it is these differences that are of interest to us in terms of the formation of the independence of consciousness.
A difference in viewpoints regarding the nature of a value and a surplus value is determined by that in extrapolated modes of an activity. Developed mercantilism treats a surplus value in the same way as it is understood by a merchant who does not go beyond the external superficial movement of commodities — the process of their circulation.
James Stewart, whom Marx called "a reasonable voicer of the monetary and mercantilist system", interprets a price of commodities (presented commodities) in two ways, having a mode of a merchant's activity (a purchase made for a sale) as a relative form of his idealema. "In a price of commodities, I consider two things as really existing and completely different from one another: an actual value of commodities and a profit from alienation" [6, p. 10]. An actual value of commodities, according to D. Stewart, does not bring a profit. A profit is only realised in a process of selling commodities above their value.
"Orthodox" mercantilists interpreted the sale of commodities above their value as a positive increase of wealth, as a profit that increases the total wealth of a country through exchange with other countries. D. Stewart overcomes this statement with a simple consideration that in an aggregate process of buying-and-selling, a gain of one party means a loss of the other one. That is to say, there is no positive increase in value here, there is only "a fluctuation balances of wealth between parties involved."
At the same time, D. Stewart shares the views of mercantilists concerning "a profit from alienation". In fact, his point of view is reduced to a statement that a profit arises in circulation and does not arise in circulation. He does not realise the inconsistency of his proposition.
D. Stewart speculates about manufacturers and industrialists, but he identifies them with merchants, because a relative form of a mercantilistic idealema, purchase-and-sale as a mode of activity extrapolated to the entire economic reality, specifically refracts their activities in his mind. A merchant here (= pur-chase-and-sale) objectively obscures — to theoretical economic consciousness — the specificity of qualitatively different modes of a bourgeois activity in the economic sphere.
An objective trend in the development of a basis of a bourgeois idealema is evolvement towards the universal alienation of property. A progressively wider range of things becomes an object of purchase-and-sale, including means of production. There appear "hardworking people" (A. Smith) in big numbers, who are deprived of means of production and, consequently, of means of existence. A content of a basis of a bourgeois idealema (money) is realised for the sake of money accumulation using more and more diverse ways. A logical summary of the historical movement of money is that the latter, being an ideal abstraction of the commodity world that has generated it (as a measure of value), return to a basis that has originated it (as a means of circulation) and layer by layer objectively abstract its genetic prerequisites as conditions for its self-expansion, up to the involvement of living labour in this metamorphosis.
This process correlates with a trend of the development of a relative form of an idealema and bourgeoisie's modes of activity, which are extrapolated to the economic reality. So, a miser's idealema is a bourgeois idealema "inter se", whose mode of activity is abstinence from consumption. Logically, a moneylender, a refined bourgeois, is the closest to a miser. A relative form of a moneylender's idealema is M — M'. A moneylender extrapolates this mode of activity to money which is in someone else's private property.
In comparison with the fetishistic slavish dependence of a miser's idealema on a money material which is within boundaries of this private property, a moneylender's idealema is more independent from its basis, from this private money property. There is some progress here, directed towards "enlightened fetishism". A moneylender "buys" big money for his money. As K. Marx notes, an intermediate commodity is here, too. It is an absolutely ideal commodity — the conscience, honour [7, p. 21—23] of a person to whom money is lent.
A material mediating movement and the realisation of money in commodities are closed to a moneylender. For him, an act of loaning, M — M', is essential. An equivalent form of a moneylender's idealema is an interest rate of a loan, M'. Mercantilism reflects an extreme lack of independence demonstrated by bourgeois economic consciousness which does not knows any other existence of a surplus value except for an increase of a monetary material. Such is early mercantilism.
K. Marx wrote that he (a capitalist — a notice of the authors of the present paper) must have money in his hands for the anticipation of ... a surplus value " [8, p. 247]. In this phrase, K. Marx noted two points of a bourgeois idealema, its basis and its equivalent form. But a bourgeois always expects a surplus value in its certain manifestation, and this specificity depends on a mode of economic activities. The more developed are methods of the realisation of money and a relative form of an idealema, the wider is a horizon of anticipation.
A more developed idealema (in comparison with a moneylender's idealema and its relative form M — M') has a relative form M — C — M'. A collapse of credit recipients makes creditors to face a need to realise obtained masses of commodities, i.e. an act of lending is revealed as a more developed form — the purchase of commodities. Not all commodities could compete with gold in its function of money, they got spoiled and destroyed, giving rise to a natural desire to mold a surplus value in an effective coin. Honoré de Balzac's Gobseck is a logically intermediate type between a moneylender and a merchant.
A final turning point in conscience occurs when money objectively gained a hold as a means of self-expansion. A merchant's mode of activities (buying-and-selling) determines a mercantilistic idealema. The extrapolation of buying-and-selling provides bourgeois economic consciousness with the rest of the economic world as the otherness [Anderssein] of profit obtained from alienation. More and more quantities (in perspective — infinite numbers ) commodities of different quality, acquire a value of means for
the accumulation of advanced money after falling within a sphere of merchant activities. Mercantilist consciousness "evaporates" commodities of different quality to the abstraction of profit obtained from alienation.
The quality of commodities, their user value pale into insignificance, because mercantilist consciousness is already interested in a quantitative difference of profit produced by purchase-and-sale. In mercantilist consciousness, any commodity is money. Therefore, a quantitative difference connected with an ability of commodities to bring surplus money comes to the surface. "At the root of views of mercantilists was an idea that labour is only productive in those branches of trade, products of which, having been sent abroad, bring more money to a country as compared with what they cost... — which, therefore, offer a country an opportunity to participate, in an increased measure, in the appropriation of products... of gold and silver mines" [6, p. 135].
D. Stewart fixes some finite limits of mercantilist consciousness and of a mercantilist idealema, an eve of a transition from considering a surplus value only in objectified, material existence to considering the latter in a subjective form (labour) as well.
Physiocrats are "a voicer" (K. Marx) of a land owner, more precisely, of a capitalist farmer. "Physiocrats shifted studying the origin of a surplus value from a sphere of circulation to a sphere of direct production" [6, p. 14]. Physiocrats identified a value with a user value. Therefore, a surplus value was interpreted as an excess of user values, which were produced, over user values consumed in a production process — consumed costs.
Historically, former means ensuring the self-expansion of money became less and less consistent with their purpose. Hence, bourgeois consciousness resorted to new modes of activities. Nothing could be bought from a bankrupt individual private owner. He has no materialised labour for sale (a commodity), accordingly, he has no materialised labour for purchase (money).
Meanwhile, a merchant's money urgently requires self-expansion, hence follows the restructuring of a relative form of an idealema and of modes of activities extrapolated to the economic reality. Every new restructuring of extrapolated modes of activities is the logical continuation and development of already existing ones. This development has the character of an abrupt transition to the inclusion of a new element in an existing mode of an activity. This new and decisive element makes a specific impact on an idealema in general.
In theoretical generalising economic consciousness, the qualitative specificity of an idealema is sublimat-
ed to the absolute, and the entire economic reality is re-interpreted in the light of this specificity. Since a relative form of an idealema is an ideal system which "regulates" the whole reflected world for some given economic consciousness, it is universal for the latter.
"Just as agricultural labour, in physiocrats' opinion, is the only productive labour, the only labour that creates a surplus value, so the form of a surplus value that distinguishes agricultural labour from all other branches of labour, namely the land rent, is a universal form of a surplus value for them. An industrial profit and a money interest are just different headings under which a land rent is distributed and transferred in certain shares from hands of land owners to hands of other classes" [6, p.18].
A specifying element of a physiocratic idealema was hiring the labour force of a farmer and this element, as can be seen from K. Marx's thought, converted an equivalent form of an idealema, M', into a land rent, which was a measure of the extrapolation of a physiocratic idealema to the entire economic reality reflected in consciousness: a basis of the existence of all other classes of society is a land rent.
A surplus value in physiocratic consciousness also appears at first in the form of a thing, as "a pure gift of nature". Here, the influence of a mercantilist idealema has its effect, which generally is only associated with the objectivised existence of a surplus value. However, according to physiocrats' propositions, for instance in A. R. J. Turgot's opinion, a certain shift of a surplus value from an objectified state to labour is already evedent. A. R. J. Turgot writes: "What a farmer's labour extracts from the land beyond an amount that is necessary to meet his personal needs forms the only fund of wages which all other members of society get in exchange for their work" [9, p. 9].
In a physiocratic idealema, an industrial capitalist's profit appears as a deduction from a land rent. His profit is reduced to his income by physiocrats. A physiocratic idealema, just as a mercantilist idealema preceding it, is universally extrapolated to the entire economic reality, from a sphere of land rent production and agriculture to industry, trade and other "fruitless" (from the point of view of physiocrats) occupations.
At the same time, a physiocratic idealema is objectively limited by its peculiarity, the interpretation of a surplus value as unpaid agricultural labour. Both in the form of an interest, and in the form of "a profit obtained from alienation", as well as in the form of a land rent, a surplus value is objectively special. These forms are stages of the development of a surplus value into a truly universal form. But since it is in a production sphere that the essence of capital
lies, a relative form of a physiocratic idealema enables consciousness to display essential aspects of social functioning, as is obvious by the example of "Tableau Économic" [The Economic Table] of F. Quesnay.
Concerning the latter, K. Marx wrote: "It was an attempt to present the entire process of the production of capital as a process of reproduction, circulation — just as a form of this process of reproduction and money circulation — just as an aspect of capital circulation" [6, p. 345].
A metamorphosis of a relative form of a physi-ocratic idealema (i.e. a mode of money movement from an initial amount to being advanced in a farmer's means of production, in a farmer's labour force) extrapolated to the economic reality prepared a review of all other kinds of social production with a view of a positive increase of wealth.
P. Verri, an early critic of "the superstition of physiocrats", notes: "The production of value and wealth takes place to the same extent both in the event that land, air and water turn into in wheat in the field and in the event that adhesive egestas of insects pass into silk cloth under the hand of a human, or when separate pieces of metal are joined together to form a clock mechanism" [6, p. 40].
With capitalism developing, the labour of industrial workers is increasingly recognised as productive (productive from a viewpoint of a money owner, a bourgeois) along with agricultural labour. This is determined by the fact that a "free" labour force, regardless of a form of its manifestation, gains an increasingly strong footing in the metamorphosis of a relative form of an idealema. A equivalent form of such an idealema, a surplus value, begins to approach a level of conceptual comprehension and prepares it.
The metamorphosis of a relative form of an physi-ocratic idealema is "a beginning of the end" of the relative independence of bourgeois economic consciousness, a beginning of a limit beyond which the vulgarisation of theoretical comprehension takes place. Therefore, the exhaustion of possibilities connected with the development of the relative independence of consciousness within boundaries of bourgeois consciousness should lead to a need to consider the economic consciousness of a more progressive class.
Why can we say that a physiocratic idealema is "a beginning of the end" of the relative independence of bourgeois economic consciousness? Because a really substantive (in relation to a value and a surplus value) element — labour — penetrated into a relative form of an idealema. Eventually, the bourgeois attitude comes necessarily to the conclusion that asserts the exclusively functional role of bourgeoisie which exists, taking away means of subsistence from others.
Bourgeoisie by and large is fundamentally incapable of venturing to plant "a mine" under themselves.
A complete exhaustion of possibilities associated with the progressive development of the relative independence of economic consciousness in the lat-ter's bourgeois form is connected with the names of A. Smith and D. Ricardo. Labour as such, independent from a form of its manifestation, was presented in their teachings as a measure of value, surplus labour as a measure of a surplus value. This provides a weapon for the proletarian criticism of bourgeois political economy. Proletarian criticism is maintained within the framework of an idealema which has a basis fundamentally different from that of bourgeois and, respectively, other relative and equivalent forms. The strictly scientific understanding of labour as a measure of value, of necessity leading to consequent conclusions, is associated with the name of K. Marx.
So, as we can see, the objective development of a basis of an idealema at a stage of formation crystallised in a number of objective mental polarised forms developing from each other: M — M', M — C — M',
M. A. P
M — C' — M',
W. F.
(M. A. P. are means of agricultural production, W. F. is a farmer's workforce). The specificity of forms identified that of an idealema, as well as the differentiation of an original idealema into mercantilist and physiocratic ones. As a result of universal extrapolation to the economic reality, both the idealemas present a specific picture of this reality, summarised in theoretical systems.
In the course of the complication of modes of activities (abstinence from consumption, loaning, purchasing, selling, hiring a farmer), which are extrapolated to the economic reality, the establishment of the relative independence of consciousness takes place. While "a stingy knight" and a miser are absolutely focused on his private property of money and consider the latter's immobility within the framework of this property to be a source of money self-expansion, a moneylender is not so dependent in his mind on the basis of his idealema. He also reckons money belonging to another private property as the expansion of his money.
A merchant's basis is even more independent from that of an idealema. He relates an increase of his money not only to the money belonging to another private property, but also to commodities pertaining to another private property.
Besides, just as a lender becomes independent in his mind from a qualitative originality of a human by lending money to a man at interest and by repeating this operation with respect to others (all other private prop-
erties simply become the otherness [Anderssein] of an interest rate), in the same way a merchant eliminates the dependence of his consciousness on the quality of purchased and sold commodities (and on commodity owners) by replicating an act of buying-and-selling.
Commodity owners with their commodities and money turn into the otherness of "a profit from alienation".
Finally, hiring draws labour itself into a sphere of consideration, and the history repeats itself: at first an increase of advanced money is seen only in a specific form of labour (in agricultural labour) and then, with the universal spread of employment, in labour as such.
In order to obtain an advanced level of the independence of consciousness, an individual does not necessarily elaborates a polarised objective mental form just through their own activities, they may simply master it by following a social example. But its limit as a form is determined in aggregate social development.
The formation of relative independence may be presented in the form of a spiral consisting of increasingly expanding circles — idealemas. A breakthrough to every new circle occurs as a result of mastering a new mode of economic activities. With a new mode emerging, a new idealem is extrapolated in breadth, "horizontally" and synchronously until
the whole space of the economic reality available to the latter is mastered, in order to give place again to a more developed idealema ready to succeed.
Let's draw some major conclusions:
1. The formation of the independence of consciousness is determined by:
a) the natural character of the formation of a material basis itself (and relative to economic consciousness — by the increasing division of labour);
(b) the consideration of interests of an increasing mass of individuals who are carriers of a given form of consciousness;
(c) an objective logic of the development of thought (by a collision of views representing different strata of one and the same class).
2. The creative activity of consciousness, its outstripping and independence from being are manifestations of the relative independence of consciousness at a stage of its formation. At the same time, the relative independence of consciousness at this stage is yet far from "purity" (syncretism, the dominance of prejudice, internal subjective inconsistency).
3. A tendency to withdraw subjective contradictions and replace prejudice by reasoning makes the objective inconsistency of an objective mental form increasingly clear.
References
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Сведения об авторах
Невелев Анатолий Борисович — доктор философских наук, профессор кафедры философии, Челябинский государственный университет. Челябинск, Россия. filos@csu.ru
Камалетдинова Альфия Янаховна — кандидат педагогических наук, доцент кафедры философии, Челябинский государственный университет. Челябинск, Россия. allakamaletdinova@rambler.ru
Bulletin of Chelyabinsk State University. 2019. No. 5 (427). Philosophy Sciences. Iss. 52. Pp. 10—18.
