Full Title -- Seldon Speaks:
‘The Elision and Re-Emergence of the Arithmetical Qualifiers
and Marx’s «arché», “The Elementary Form of Value” ’.
Dear Readers,
It is my pleasure to share
with you, from time to time, selections from the seminal sayings, shared by him
among we of F.E.D., that are regularly spoken forth by F.E.D.’s
co-founder, Karl Seldon, once the transcripts of such are released, by the F.E.D.
General Council, for public sharing. The
text reproduced below is a case in point.
The standard E.D. editors’ edits have been applied to this text. In this case, I have also appended some key Encyclopedia
Dialectica diagrammatic
modules, which may help to illustrate Seldon’s account, below.
Regards,
Miguel
P.S. As of today, 23FEB2016, I have received
special dispensation, from the F.E.D.
General Council, and from the F.E.D.
Special Council of Psychohistorians, in joint session, to publicly
release additional portions of the transcripts of Seldon’s remarks on this
topic, now added in below, and including some new edits by Seldon himself.
“ . . . [proto-]human civilization, science,
mathematics did
not simply pick-up again, at the end of, or as the end of, the [northern] Mediterranean/European Dark Ages, at exactly the point where they had left
off, at the point of their zenith
development by the time of the catastrophic
fall of the ancient
Mediterranean Civilizations, that
culminated in the Roman/Hellenistic civilization,
prior to that catastrophic fall.”
“There were collective-cognitive
‘psychohistorical hystereses’.”
“Psychohistorical changes, changes
in the Mediterranean/western European ‘‘‘memes-pool’’’,
‘human phenome’, or ‘human memenome’ -- changes
in collective human «mentalité»
-- had continued to accumulate throughout these [regional] Dark Ages --
especially, and at a slowly accelerating pace, during the socio-politico-economic
‘upsurgence’ & the ‘re-burgeoning’
of mercantile commerce, that drove the prelude to the European Renaissance -- as
adumbrated in the groundbreaking 1997 C.E. book
The Measure of Reality:
Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600, by Alfred W. Crosby.”
“This cumulative shift in occidental ‘human-societal self-reproductive praxis’, and, consequently, in the occidental ‘human phenome’, manifested itself, “even” in the rarefied
‘‘‘superstructural’’’ realm of re-emergent theoretical mathematics, including in
the form of the Renaissance
elision of the ancient Mediterranean, circa 250 C.E., diophantine ‘onto-metrical arithmetical qualifier’,
Mo.”
“That “syncopated” symbol was psychohistorically rooted in the even more ancient, circa 3000
B.C.E., Mesopotamian ‘‘‘incised/impressed-token-image’’’ ‘proto-arithmetical’ ontological and metrical ‘qualifier’ ‘‘‘proto-symbols’’’,
as described by Dr. Denise
Schmandt-Besserat in her 1992 C.E. breakthrough book Before Writing: From Counting to Cuneiform.”
“Diophantus’s Mo, was excluded
from this re-awakening western European arithmetic and algebra, and, in cases like that of Simon Stevin, this elision was greeted with considerable explicit -- & favorable
-- awareness.”
“The mystery that Alfred
Crosby failed to solve in his . . . Quantification
and Western Society. . . -- the mystery of the massive psychohistorical shift in the Western European branch of the ‘human phenome’, that he documents so richly therein -- was
already solved, long ago, as early as 1867 C.E., or even earlier, by Karl Marx, in his monumental discernment
of what he called the “Elementary or Accidental Form of Value”.
“This “Elementary Form of Value”
is not only
the starting point, the «arché» -- within our contemporary global capitalist system, the ever-present
origin and foundation, and also
the past
[psycho]historical foundation -- for
Marx’s entire
treatise, for his entire
four+ volume systematic[-dialectical] presentation of the content characterizing “Modern Society”, i.e., for
his theoretical explanation
of the ‘Capitals-System’;
for his entire
dialectical,
immanent critique of the ‘ideologized’ science of ‘‘‘capitalist political-economics’’’.”
“That “Value-Form” -- as the past [psycho]historical, and as
the ever-present meme-seed, throughout the capitalist epoch, of all forms of [the exchange-]value -- is also the foundation, both ever-present
and past
[psycho]historical, of ‘the Modern «Mentalité»’ itself; of [not just “The German Ideology”,
but, as well, of] ‘The MODERN
Ideology’ entire.”
“The “Elementary Form of Value”
is the cognitive, ideological basis of “Modern Society”, of ‘“Modernity”’ -- i.e., of capitalist civilization --
as a whole; the most radical root of the Capital “Value-Form”[Marx] itself, and of the Capital-[value-]relation
as predominant “social relation of production”.”
“That “Elementary Form of Value”
is, in its
essence, the incessant
contemporary equating
-- implicit in and permeating the inveterate
«praxis» of our daily lives,
globally, today, in and by the
“exchange of equivalents”, e.g., the exchange, for Money, of two
qualitatively different Commodities -- let’s call them, generically,
C1 & C2 -- that are incommensurable
in their qualitative, use-value core,
but that are apparently,
superficially,
equated by “pure” quantity alone, i.e., by “[proto-] price”, in a «praxis» which continually,
uncritically inculcates in us
a semi-conscious paradigm
of the habitual reduction of the qualitative to the “purely” quantitative. [Note: arithmetical qualifier ideograms
are distinguished
from arithmetical
quantifier ideograms, herein, by underscoring/underlining].”
“In the exchange-equation (c1)C1 =
(c2)C2, in which c1 denotes the count of units of commodity C1 that have the same price as c2 units of commodity C2, or, in --
(c1/c1)C1 =
(1)C1 =
(c2/c1)C2
-- in which (c2/c1)
represents the C2 “price” of one unit of commodity C1 -- the indicated mere quantifiers,
though applied to qualitatively heterogeneous
commodities,
seem to render them qualitatively homogeneous; proverbial “apples” versus “oranges”,
made ‘equatable’,
as if by some kind of mystic
magic.”
“However, in reality, to deeper psychohistorical discernment, such as that achieved by Karl Marx,
this ‘exchange-equating’,
this ‘‘‘homogenization’’’, is rendered possible -- is rendered ‘sustainedly
practic[e]able’ long-term -- only by way of a common quality, invisibly uniting C1 & C2, but whose ‘arithmetical unit qualifier symbol’, representing that quality-in-common, is absent, is elided, in both of the equations above.”
“This syntactical absence represents -- symbolizes -- a substantive absence, from common capitalist consciousness,
from the common mind of the
capitalist epoch, from the predominant «mentalité» of capitalist humanity --
from the ‘human
phenome’ of the
capitalist interval of human-historical time, i.e., from the capitalist ‘historical «species»’ of humanity [cf. Marx on “historical specificity”] -- of this common quality, which is unknown to that mind; whose meme is missing from that stage of the developing ‘human phenome’.”
“This common quality
is created and sustained -- continually
reproduced -- by an unconscious alchemy of our own «praxis» of capitalist
competition -- e.g., of price competition -- itself, i.e., by an unconscious and unintended aspect of our own social agency; of our own social-reproductive ‘‘‘subject-ivity’’’; of our own daily activity.”
“This common quality,
and the ‘arithmetical unit qualifier’
that can represent it, becomes known, to such agents, only if they scientifically theorize, or become acquainted with
other agents’ scientific theorizations,
of the phenomenon
of exchange-value
within a[ny] capital-centered,
capital-dominated
society.”
“This common quality
-- of capitalist commodities, of capital-produced
commodities;
of “commodity-capital”
[Marx] -- becomes known to such agents only, albeit only partially, only distortedly, via the labor-time
value theories of, for example, Adam
Smith, Benjamin Franklin, David Ricardo, etc.”
“This common quality
becomes known
more fully, more scientifically, via the “law” of value theory -- via the ‘price-attractor
of a commodity =
abstract-labor-time-presently-socially-necessary-to-reproduce a unit of
that commodity’ theory
-- via the breakthrough psychohistorical theory of Karl Marx
himself.”
[Aside: “Of course, Marx’s “law” of value is his analytical
abstraction, to enable the theorization
of the capitalist system. It is an ‘‘‘homeomorphic’’’ short-cut or proxy that allows
the dialectical
derivation
and prediction
of the long-term tendencies of that system, in abstraction from
a witheringly-detailed micro-analysis of the actual historical course of the competitions of individual capital[ist enterprise]s. Actual, ‘‘‘socially-necessary-abstract-labor-time
values’’’ are
actually ever-changing, and empirical prices are ever-deviating from, and “hunting” for, those [changing]
values, and
therefore are continually fluctuating above and below those values, driven by the market competition of capitals.”
“The ‘‘‘abstract-labor-time value’’’
of any capitalist
commodity only appears, empirically
-- as its price -- momentaneously, and,
even then, only as modified by other conditions immanent
to the capitals-system,
such as the process
of the competition of capitals
that produces
the equalization of the rate of
profit, or the formation
of a general rate of profit,
across the social
expanse of the differing technical compositions/productivities of productive
industrial capitals.”
“That ‘‘‘abstract-labor-time value’’’
is like a [ “strange”] attractor of an asymptotically aperiodic nonlinear
dynamical system, and of a nonlinear dynamical system that is also continually “bifurcated” by causes external to that system proper, and is also continually ‘self-bifurcated’
by causes internal to that system proper, e.g., by the growth of productivity, or of the “productive force”, of industrialized capitals’ commodity-production.”
“Indeed, so ‘fluctuatory’, so
oscillatory, are the phenomenologies
of ‘price-attractors’ within the capitals-system,
that one might [mis]take
those phenomenologies
to be “pure”, “random” fluctuation only, without even any
transient central tendencies of any kind.”].”
“Let us denote, by L(.), a function/operator that returns, when applied to a symbol that represents a given «species» of commodity, the quantity of hours of generic, “abstract” [Marx] human labor typically needed to reproduce a single unit of that commodity under the presently, momentaneously prevailing conditions of the competitive capitalist market for that commodity, including the labor-productivity
of the most advanced fixed capital technology presently being applied to its already marketed production.”
“Let us denote, by l, the ‘arithmetical unit qualifier’ for a single unit, say a single hour, of that generic, “abstract” human labor time. Let l1 denote the quantity
of “abstract” or
generic human labor hours presently needed to reproduce a unit of commodity C1, and l2 the quantity
of “abstract” human labor hours presently needed to reproduce a unit of commodity C2.”
“Then: What must be going on, therefore, per such deeper discernment, can be
reflected, explicitly, symbolically, by
inserting, into those ‘exchange
equations’, on both sides of each such equation, this ‘arithmetical ontological* qualifier’ operator/function, L(.), to stand for the “abstract” human labor time kind
of thing/common quality shared by all capital-produced commodities, thereby
achieving a ‘‘‘re-qualification’’’
of those equations, with a symbolic provision
for/representative of that
common quality, viz. --
[(c1)C1 =
(c2)C2] ==> [(c1)L(C1) =
(c2)L(C2)] ==>
[(c1)(l1)l
= (c2)(l2)l]
-- or --
(l1)l = (c2/c1)(l2)l
-- where we restore the
heretofore elided
‘arithmetical unit qualifier’,
so as to make the exchange
equations make
sense -- that is, so as to make the exchange equations address the same kind of thing,
the same
common quality, the same ‘arithmetical unit qualifier’, l, on both
the left hand side and the right hand side of these exchange equations, rather than, as before,
equating “apples & oranges”.”
“Let us next “decode” the generic algebra above into a specific, hypothetical case example, so as to obtain a
more direct, more specific -- i.e., an arithmetical --
“feel” for what the generic algebra above really means.”
“Suppose that we imagine a moment of human-social time in which it typically
takes 30 “abstract” human labor hours to produce
each single bed, and 10 generic
human labor hours to produce
each single chair,
and in which a generic human labor hour
[for both] costs $10.”
“To arrive at the simplest, uttermost root -- the “economic cell-form”
«arché» -- of capital[ist][
exchange]-value,
Marx abstracted
out, e.g., the Money[-price]
mediation of
typical, present-day
exchanges in capitalist society, driving that mediation back into implicitude.”
“For clarity, we shall now put
that Money[-price]
mediation back, explicitly, into these ‘Elementary Form of Value’ exchange equations, moving to
the more ‘thought-concrete’ presentation-step of explicitude
for the “Money-Form” of value, and for its ‘‘‘money-mediated circulation of commodities’’’
[generically ‘algebraicized’, by Karl
Marx, as, e.g., C-M-C’, such that commodity C is qualitatively
unequal to commodity C’]. Let us,
therefore, for familiarity’s sake, now relax that abstraction, and explicitly posit symbolization for the Money medium
into our thus revised,
& case
example concretized, exchange equations --
(6)chairs =
(2)beds;
(6)chairs =
(600)dollars =
(2)beds, instantiating
Marx’s “C-M-C’”;
(6/6)chairs = (600/6)dollars, ==>
(1)chair(s) = (100)dollars, the unit price for chairs is $100;
(2)beds = (600)dollars, ==>
(2/2)beds = (600/2)dollars, ==>
(1)bed(s) = (300)dollars, the unit price for beds is $300.”
“Now, let us make the exchange equations “commensurable”, by
re-expressing them in
terms of the “abstract”
or generic human labor hours presently needed to reproduce a unit of the commodity “beds”, and of
the commodity
“chairs”, as of the hypothetical present moment of our example --
(6)L(chairs) =
(2)L(beds);
(6×10)l =
(2×30)l;
(60)l =
(60)l;
(6)(10)/(60)l =
(60/60)l = (600/60)dollars, ==> (1)l = (10)dollars;
the unit-price for the “abstract” or generic human labor power commodity
is $10 per hour.”
“Thus, if a critical theory of capitalism -- of our capital-«praxis»
-- is in place, i.e., if Marx’s “law” of value is in the minds of the human personifications/agents
of the “social relations of production” that are incorporated into, and
intrinsic to, that «praxis»
-- “social relations of
production” named, per their Marxian names, as the “Commodity-relation”, the “Money-relation”, and the “«Kapital»-relation” itself -- then the “common quality”
of capitalist exchange-values can be restored to those agents’ awarenesses of capitalism’s exchange-relations. The ‘arithmetical ontological* qualifier’ labor-hour
unit, l, for the “abstract” or generic human labor hours presently socially necessary for the reproduction of given Commodities, can then be represented explicitly in the exchange equations. Under this immanent critique, those equations transform as follows --
(c1)C1 =
(c2)C2 becomes (c1)(l1)l
= (c2)(l2)l;
(c1)C1 =
(m)M =
(c2)C2 becomes (c1)(l1)l
= (m)$
= (c2)(l2)l;
(6)chairs =
(2)beds becomes
(6)(10)l =
(2)(30)l, and;
(6)chairs =
(600)dollars =
(2)beds becomes
(6)(10)l = (60)(10)$
= (2)(30)l.”
“However, for those personifications
of these social
relations
who remain unaware of the critical theory of capitalism, and of its
psychohistorical “law” of value, which names a pattern inadvertently created and continually reproduced
by their own activities, of price-competition,
etc., and by the similar
activities of other such human agents, these exchange
relations/equations remain opaque.”
“Seemingly unqualified
-- qualifier-elided
in fact -- and heterogeneous, qualitatively
different commodities appear to be exchange-equated, made homogeneous,
made commensurable, as if by “pure”
monetary quantity alone, i.e., by monetary units
[e.g., $s]
quantities, “prices”, whose true units, whose ‘arithmetical ontological* qualifier unit’, l, remains obscure.”
“Therefore, every continually
repeated daily act
of monetary purchase, of the exchange of quantities of given commodity units for quantities
of money units, incessantly engaged and practiced by all of
we agents, inculcates and reinforces, in our minds, both unconsciously and semi-consciously,
its seeming reduction of all qualities to “pure” quantity;
its qualifier-elided, use-value qualities-elided, ‘qualitativity’-elided, “pure” ‘‘‘quant’’’ paradigm, and «mentalité»; the typical «mentalité» of modern, capitalist humanity.”
“All this is reflected, psychohistorically, in the modern “standard”, ‘contra-ancient’
arithmetics,
of “pure”, ‘unqualified
quantifiers’, starting with the so-called “Natural” numbers, i.e., with the elements of the set N =
{1, 2, 3,
...}, and continuing on into those of the sets, or spaces,
W, Z, Q, and R.”
“Karl Marx identifies
the root
issue of this whole matter as follows --
“In
order to discover how the elementary expression of the value of a commodity
lies hidden in the value-relation of two commodities, we must, in the first
place, consider the latter entirely apart from its quantitative aspect. The usual mode of procedure is generally the
reverse, and in the value-relation nothing is seen but the proportion between
definite quantities of two different sorts of
commodities that are considered equal to each other. It is apt to be forgotten
that the magnitudes
of different
things can be compared quantitatively, only when
those magnitudes
are expressed in terms of
the same unit. It is only as expressions of such a unit
that they are of the same denomination, and therefore commensurable. Whether 20 yards of linen = 1 coat or = 20
coats or = x coats -- that is, whether a given quantity of linen is worth few or many coats, every such statement
implies that linen and coats, as magnitudes of value, are expressions of the same unit, things of the same kind. Linen = coats is the basis of the
equation. But the two commodities whose
identity of quality is thus assumed, do
not play the same part. ... .”
[Karl Marx; Capital; volume I;
Chapter I., Commodities.; Section 3., The Form of Value or
Exchange-Value; A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value; 2. The Relative
Form of Value; International Publishers [New York: 1967], pp. 49-50, emphases added by
F.E.D.].”
“The
‘Elementary Form of
[Commodity[-Capital-]]Value’, or --
{ (cj)Cj = (ck)Ck }, for all j ~= k in N
-- is Marx’s name for the epoch-making cognitive
‘psycho-mutation’ in the ‘human phenome’ that makes the capitalist system collectively-cognitively, culturally possible, & that, via the daily human experiences
of capital-dominated
society, expandedly reproduces that
‘psycho-mutation’ throughout the capitalist epoch,
spreading out over the face of the earth with the “world market”.”
“In the epoch of the ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, and even so
late as that of the ancient
Mediterranean Hellenistic civilization, the prevailing ‘human phenome’, the prevailing individual human «mentalité»,
was not yet quite so permeated by the unconscious/semi-conscious paradigm
of the social
practices of exchange-value exchange, let alone by that of capital-value,
as has been our post-Renaissance epoch, so that their early
arithmetics
still featured ‘arithmetical
qualifiers’.”
“Only pre-capitalist
forms of the Commodity-[barter-]relation, and of the Money-relation, and only the “antediluvian” forms of capital -- usurer’s capital, mercantile capital, and slave-labor-based [not yet wage-labor-based]
latifundial agricultural productive capital, were as yet extant
in the ancient epoch.
“The attained levels of the human-societal
self-force of human-societal
self-reproduction, of the ‘meta-Darwinian’ self-reproductive force of the human
species, throughout the ancient epoch, were insufficient
to even episodically induce,
let alone to sustain,
the full development of “the capital-relation”: industrial capitalism.”
“The human «praxis»
of exchange-value exchange
achieved even greater social practice ‘‘‘density’’’, or ‘‘‘concentration’’’, than
ever before, in
the ‘social singularity nucleation zones’
of proto-Renaissance Europe, e.g., in what was to become Italy, where, e.g.,
double-entry accounting for capitalist
enterprises
first spread, & where western
acceptance of Indo-Arabic numeration first surged.”
“The stage was thereby
prepared for the formation
of the ‘Elementary Form of
Value’ as the unrecognized cognitive core of modern society, for the eventual
irruption of industrial capitalism -- of capitalism proper -- and for the elision of the ‘arithmetical qualifiers’, as a ‘‘‘superstructural’’’ psychohistorical reflection of that formation.”
“This Foundation is designed to be a harbinger of the higher global civilization; of the first planet-wide
-- Terra-wide
-- Renaissance;
of the supplementarily-opposite
system, the higher successor-system,
to the present,
capitals-system.
By this, we mean the higher successor-system
whose foundation
is generalized
equity,
as the successor
predominant “social relation of production”
to capital
as predominant “social relation of production”;
the ‘‘‘equitist’’’
society, of Political-Economic Democracy, that is to
come, if this planetary human species “passes”
its looming
‘Meta-Darwinian Planetary Selection Test’ global crisis of humanity.”
“It is fitting, therefore,
that the [dialectical]
arithmetics,
discovered, wielded, and propagated by this Foundation, as cognitive-psychohistorical
harbingers of
a society no
longer obsessively centered upon “the
exchange-value”
[Marx], but, on the contrary, centered upon that higher form of individual, personal, local use-value
which is social, collective, nonlinear use-value; which is ‘meta-Darwinian
human-species-fitness-advancing’ human-societal
self-reproductive use-value;
which is human-societal self-reproductive self-force itself,
are dialectical
ideographies which -- helically, spirally, in a higher form -- restore the ‘arithmetical qualifiers’ of old,
of the ‘human
phenome’ before
its formation of
the ‘money-mind’ -- i.e., of the ‘capital-mind’ -- of the ‘exchange-value mind’; of the ‘‘‘quant’’’ mind, one-sidedly, “purely” quantitative
in its [thus] mal-appreciation
of reality -- of the human experience entire.”
“Again, we should emphasize,
this return
of the ‘arithmetical
qualifiers’, and of the ‘qualitative aspect of arithmetical
ideography’; this [psycho]historical re-emergence and restoration
of the ‘arithmetical
qualifiers’, is no merely cyclical, circular return. It is, on the contrary, a “return with development”.”
“This return, too, exhibits a
collective-cognitive ‘psychohistorical hysteresis’,
a psychohistorical gain -- by this time, so long after the last Dark Ages -- relative
to the development of ‘arithmetical
qualification’ as it stood even at its zenith development before those Dark Ages.”
“This revelation will not
be immediately accessible to most of those most afflicted with the “Elementary Form of Value”
cognitive deformation. Those whose minds
are, mostly unconsciously, pervaded and permeated by this one-sided “Elementary Form of Value” paradigm will not be quickly or easily able to detect
its impact upon their thought and feeling -- to
discern how this paradigm
possesses their
cognition; how pervasively it appropriates and molds their entire awareness.”
“Assimilation of this revelation requires time,
reflection, thorough self-inspection, deep introspection and meditation -- to which the Foundation’s “cloistered”
conditions are conducive -- even to discern it, let alone to transcend it; let
alone for modern
humans to free themselves from that cognitive deficit.”
“We have found that the
learning of the F.E.D. dialectical
ideographies -- the F.E.D. systems of qual[o-quant]itative arithmetic/algebra -- and their application to the ‘meta-modeling’
of the our universe, and of its sub-universes,
can serve as a powerful
psychohistorical therapeutic practice, for amending, and helping to heal, the cognitive diseases of
the contemporary
‘human phenome’,
and for preparing the way to the higher ‘human phenome’ to
come.”
*[Our ‘arithmetical qualifier’ herein, l, is actually a ‘compound qualifier’, the product of a ‘metrical qualifier
unit’ [muo1] for
the time dimension, e.g., for hours, with an ‘ontological qualifier
unit’ for that
Marxian-discerned “kind
of being” which is industrial-capital-immanent “abstract human labor” [m1],
such that, in the 7th, Rm_ system of dialectical arithmetic in the F.E.D.
[meta-]systematic
dialectical
presentation of the dialectical progression of the F.E.D.
dialectical
arithmetics,
l
would be more richly re-expressed as --
m1 x muo1 = m1 + uo1 ].
