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Iñigo Carrera, Juan
Dialectical Cognition. The regulation of the Action in its Form of Reproduction of Self-Necessity by thought CICP, Buenos Aires, 1992. ISBN: 950-798-000-8 |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Presentation
Capital’s development into conscious revolutionary action. Critique of scientific theory
Dialectical cognition; i.e., the regulation of action in its form of reproduction of self-necessity by thought
Chapter 1. What is it to be done
Chapter 2. The concrete subject of action; necessity’s development until it reaches its concrete form of freedom
Chapter 3. The concrete form of dialectical cognition process
- From the determination of reality by the process of its ideal reproduction to the formal manifestation of this reproduction as such
- The advance from singular to general, cognition and recognition
- The general course of the development of the capacity to consciously personify the necessity of real concrete forms
- The exposition of the ideal reproduction of reality
Chapter 4. The ideal reproduction of reality concisely seen in its concrete unity
SUMMARY
The formulation of theories appears nowadays as the natural form of scientific cognition. But scientific theory itself has already arrived at the logically unavoidable conclusion that it is impossible to demonstrate the truth or falsity of theories prior to action. Therefore, scientific theories are only ways of interpreting the world and, as such, the very negation of conscious action, of the action that carries in itself the cognition of its own necessity. Socialism is the consciously, thus scientifically, regulated human social metabolism process. As much as scientific cognition is condemned to interpretation, so is socialism condemned to impossibility.
The question of the development of scientific cognition truly is, today, the question of the development of the necessity of capitalism to annihilate itself in a superior social form. Thus, it is specifically about capital’s development into conscious revolutionary action. And, therefore, about the development of the organicity itself of this action, about the development of scientific cognition as necessary concrete form of radical political action.
It is not scientific cognition that faces the end of its history. It is rather scientific theory, the historical specific form of that cognition when it is alienated potency in the human social metabolism process autonomously regulated by means of the valorization of value, i.e., in capitalism. The critique of the current universally dominating science does not take shape in the construction of a new theory, but in the overcoming of scientific theory itself. Thus, it is not about conceiving a new representation of reality, condemned by its sole condition of representation to follow a constructive necessity alien to the real necessity, i.e., a logic. The point is to virtually appropriate reality by reproducing its necessity through thought, the ideal reproduction of reality. Hence, the development of scientific cognition as regulation of the transformation of our present society into the one of freely associated individuals is the critique of scientific theory.
In the very form of its method, that is, as dialectical cognition, the reproduction of real self-necessity by means of thought immediately shows itself excluding all appearance of externality in relation to the action that it sustains. It shows itself, therefore, as what it is: the regulation of such action; that is to say, a specific portion of this action and, consequently, this action itself. Scientific research thus overcomes all appearance of being the abstract opposite of practice, to affirm itself as practical criticism. The unfolding of the forms of dialectical cognition insofar as they are specifically such already suffices by itself as a spearhead for the necessarily collective work in which the ideal reproduction of our real necessity takes shape; at the present time, the regulation with cognition of the cause of the radical transformation of society.