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C H A P T E R 4 BEING AND BEINGS The last clear definite function of man—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man. . . . For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe , grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his concepts. —Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath T he analysis thus far has operated at a very high level of generality, concentrating on the broadest categorial similarities between process and production and the congruence of their conceptualization and articulation through dialectic. But given that Marx’s analysis, and his analysis of capitalism in particular, operates on the level of human social productivity, we need to move toward more specific ontological and sociohistorical levels. First, we need to understand what a processive/productive philosophy contributes to ontology in general and then we must tackle the difficulty of how and whether a metaphysical scheme which, in order to maintain consistently thoroughgoing relationality, asserts that the fundamental occasions of all forms of being are on some deep level the “same,” can adequately account for the differences of ontological and functional “kind” among enduring social nexūs. In other words, the question is, on a processive model, a model dominated by internal relations, what is being and what accounts for the difference between forms of being? The problem here is one of individuation and differentiation on the macrocosmic scale. If Marx’s critique can be adequately philosophically grounded in such a processive philosophy, then we should find his answers to the above questions to be, in important ways, quite similar to those of Whitehead. One of the similarities between the category of process and that of production is the way in which each concept operates on numerous levels. Process applies to the generality of movement itself and to the self-creation of 65 each occasion of being; production describes the “rational abstraction” applicable to all historical modes and each individual historical-social mode as well. It is necessary to explore the levels of ontological differentiation. Only upon the completion of the ontological picture, only when the nature of inorganic, organic, animal, and human being and the specific kinds of productive functioning that belong to and serve to differentiate each are understood , will we be prepared to discuss that particular sociohistorical mode of “economic” production called capitalism. For this mode of productive activity is a social interaction or relation between and within ontological levels which, I will ultimately claim, apparently perverts and inverts essential functional differentiation. This point lies at the heart of the unity of the Marxian corpus. The early writings, those designated by some commentators as the “humanistic” or “idealistic” works, provide the essential philosophical foundations , in light of which the analysis of capitalism laid out in the later “economic ” and “scientific” writings is transformed from mere reactionary polemic to true revolutionary philosophical critique. PROCESS, PRODUCTION, AND THE MACROCOSMIC ONTOLOGY The link already articulated between the metaphysics of process and Marx’s category of production in general already provides some very specific considerations for the articulation of an ontology. For both Marx and Whitehead the world is a world in process and that process is effected by the productive activity of its individuals. Whether those individuals are designated as microcosmic actual entities or macrocosmic human persons, these individual agents appropriate the datum of their actual or objective world and, through self-creative activity, produce that world anew. The individual is the link between the totality already produced in process and the totality to be produced in process and is, therefore, by way of its own productive becoming, the relational link between the appropriation and the new objectification. In other words, the individual is internally and socially related to its datum for becoming and by that becoming produces itself in and as a social relation afresh. The first conclusion to be drawn from this is that there is no individual in isolation. All individuals are always already social individuals due to the very fact that their activity is dependent upon the socially objectified datum that provides both the material and formal possibilities for that activity. From this we can conclude that any reference to an individual is necessarily a reference to a social individual and that any reference to a society is necessarily a reference to individuals in social relation. 66 MARX AND WHITEHEAD [18.226.93.207] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 08:26...

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