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C H A P T E R 3 THE PROCESS OF PRODUCTION Hence also the grasping of his own history as a process, and the recognition of nature (equally present as practical power over nature) as his real body. The process of development itself posited and known as the presupposition of the same. —Marx, Grundrisse P rocess philosophy is based on the conception of the constitution of each actual entity by its unique perspective on and integration of the data provided for it by its settled actual world. Thus, each occasion inherits a settled past that provides the datum for the physical and conceptual feelings that are its nontemporal self-actualization. Each actual entity is its self-creative activity of physical inheritance from a unique spaciotemporal perspective on the datum and conceptual valuation of that inherited datum; it constitutes itself by the way in which it is related to and relates itself to its world: each actual entity is its internal relations to all other entities. Marx’s basic ontological vision is also, I believe, grounded in a philosophy of internal relations but this claim requires further elucidation and defense. Since dialectics is the most appropriate method by which to articulate and explicate a philosophy of process and process philosophy is a philosophy of internal relations, one might be tempted to ascribe a philosophy of internal relations to Marx on the basis of his use of a dialectical method. But this move would be premature given that it has yet to be demonstrated that the dialectical method is inappropriate for philosophies that do not ascribe to the theses of internal relations or process. Instead, the connection should be adequately constructed by providing textual evidence of a philosophy of internal relations in Marx’s writings and indicating the structural similarity to the Whiteheadian scheme.1 This should sufficiently establish a solid and direct link to the Whiteheadian metaphysical 43 vision such as will allow the latitude of fluid movement between Marxian and Whiteheadian terminologies necessary to the later stages of this project. It will facilitate the extension of each system into the other. To exhibit conclusively that Marx relies fundamentally on a philosophy of internal relations, requires identifying a category that possesses functional equivalence to the category of process in Whitehead’s metaphysics. If such a functionally equivalent category can be found in the Marxian corpus, then it will become obvious that other commentators have located and accepted the ontological priority of internal relations because Marx’s philosophical framework is processive . This functional equivalent for Marx is, I will claim, production. PRODUCTION The delineation of the category of production in Marx is not unproblematic and the difficulties that it presents are due in large part to Marx’s method of analysis and the philosophical framework from which that analysis proceeds. A seemingly straightforward term like production in Marx’s hands can often appear to contain a nest of contradictions, but this is the case only because of the multiple levels of analysis within which any given term may appear for Marx. Sometimes he is quite careful to use different terminology on different levels of analysis or to add a qualifying term or phrase when moving between levels, but often the identical term will be used on a number of different levels. One could just chalk this up to carelessness or imprecision, but I think rather that it is a necessary feature of the relationships that occur between the different levels: both that widening spheres of analysis include one another and that certain functions on a more general level will appear in specific modes or forms on another. For example, labor is referred to very generally in the Grundrisse as “value-positing activity” and “purposive activity” (G, 274, 298, 311) and, in the third volume of Capital, Marx speaks of “[l]abour as such . . . as purposive productive activity” (C, III, 964), but such labor appears in very different forms depending upon whether the value created appears primarily as use-value or exchange-value.2 Therefore, Marx can simultaneously use the same term for both the general activity and for the historical modes of or analytic stages of that activity and does so because the abstractive conceptual generality is inclusive of the varied specific determinations and because the specific determinations exhibit themselves as modes of the general concept. Such is the case also with his use of the term production. The Introduction to the Grundrisse opens with a typical Marxian lambasting of the...

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