Sixth Observation
The consequence of Proudhon's method is to deny history.
“We shall concede that economic relations, viewed as immutable laws, eternal principles, ideal categories, existed before active and energetic men did; we shall concede further that these laws, principles and categories had, since the beginning of time, slumbered “in the impersonal reason of humanity.” We have already seen that, with all these changeless and motionless eternities, there is no history left; there is at most history in the idea, that is, history reflected in the dialectic movement of pure reason. M. Proudhon, by saying that, in the dialectic movement ideas are no longer “differentiated,” has done away with both the shadow of movement and the movement of shadows, by means of which one could still have created at least a semblance of history.” (p 108)
A materialist philosophy recognises natural laws that exist outside the mind of Man, just as it accepts that the material world, itself, exists outside the mind of man, and that Man emerges out of that material world, like all other phenomena. Long before man, the law of gravity existed, along with all the other physical laws, in this Universe, and Man has simply uncovered those laws. In a multiverse, other universes, with other laws may exist, or the same laws, but with different magnitudes for the force of gravity etc., that would produce totally different outcomes.
Even if we live in a mathematical universe, or computer simulation, there are laws that govern mathematics and computer programs, and simulations. Machine learning operates by an AI, itself discovering the laws of the world in which it must function. Cogito Ergo Sum (I think therefore I am) proves I exist, but does not define the nature of what it is that exists.
As Marx sets out in his Letter to Kugelmann, explaining The Law of Value, there are natural laws that exist for human history too. The Law of Value says that value is labour, and the value of a product/use value is determined by the labour-time required for its production. As the labour-time available for production is limited, the quantity of products it can produce is limited.
“Every child knows that any nation that stopped working, not for a year, but let us say, just for a few weeks, would perish. And every child knows, too, that the amounts of products corresponding to the differing amounts of needs demand differing and quantitatively determined amounts of society’s aggregate labour. It is self-evident that this necessity of the distribution of social labour in specific proportions is certainly not abolished by the specific form of social production; it can only change its form of manifestation. Natural laws cannot be abolished at all. The only thing that can change, under historically differing conditions, is the form in which those laws assert themselves.”
(Letter To Kugelmann)
As Engels described, therefore, society must choose how to allocate the available labour-time, to maximise the use value/utility it obtains.
“The useful effects of the various articles of consumption, compared with one another and with the quantities of labour required for their production, will in the end determine the plan.”
“As long ago as 1844 I stated that the above-mentioned balancing of useful effects and expenditure of labour on making decisions concerning production was all that would be left, in a communist society, of the politico-economic concept of value. (Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, p. 95) The scientific justification for this statement, however, as can be seen, was made possible only by Marx's Capital.”
(Anti-Duhring, Chapter 26)
But, the means by which it does this changes in each mode of production, and so the manifestation of this natural law, in each of these different modes of production is different, and the economic laws in each mode of production differ, because they are simply historical or social laws, specific to it.
“the form in which this proportional distribution of labour asserts itself in a state of society in which the interconnection of social labour expresses itself as the private exchange of the individual products of labour, is precisely the exchange value of these products.
Where science comes in is to show how the law of value asserts itself.”
(Letter To Kugelmann)
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