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#14743971
I'm punching well above my weight not being thoroughly acquainted with enough philosophy of philosophers to properly grasp this but it seems quite interesting and important for understanding Marxism. And I'm relying on a pasting of thoughts from those more articulate to myself to help illuminate what I hope to express.
This might help as a brief introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_internal_relations
http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/39/1/25.full.pdf
By contrast, Marxism is based on a dialectical approach which involves the philosophy of internal relations. The productive forces and the relations of production are essentially (i.e. internally) related. A mere person, a mere machine, is not as such a productive force. These things are productive forces only in the context of particular social relations in which they are deployed socially as productive forces.

Marx says, ‘A negro is a negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cottonspinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relationships it is no more capital than gold itself is money’ (Marx, ‘Wage labour and capital’, cited in Cohen 1978: 88).
...

The philosophy of internal relations is not about what is immediately apparent. What it says is that the more we go beyond what seems immediately evident, the more we learn about a thing or event, the more we come to see its necessity. A complete understanding of things would reveal their full necessity, the internal nature of their connections with all other things. This is what the philosophy of internal relations maintains. As William James (1897: 216) puts it:

It is a common platitude that a complete acquaintance with any one thing, however small, would require a knowledge of the entire universe. Not a sparrow falls to the ground but some of the remote conditions of his fall are to be found in the Milky Way.4

https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/a_ch03.php
No one would deny that things appear and function as they do because of their spatial-temporal ties with other things, including man as a creature with both physical and social characteristics. To conceive of things as Relations is simply to interiorize this interdependence—as we have seen Marx do with social factors—in the thing itself. Thus, the book before me expresses and therefore, on this model, relationally contains everything from the fact that there is a light on in my room to the social practices and institutions of my society which made this particular work possible. The conditions of its existence are taken to be part of what it is, and indicated by the fact that it is just this and nothing else. In the history of ideas, where every new thought is invariably an old one warmed over, this view is generally referred to as the philosophy of internal relations.1

http://sci-hub.cc/10.1177/0309816814564128
The philosophy of external relations, which reigns in both the common sense and learned discourse of our time, holds that there are both ‘things’ (the social science jargon for which is ‘factors’) and relations, but that they are logically independent of each other. Thus, in principle, the relations between two or more things can undergo dramatic changes and even disappear altogether without affecting the qualities by which we recognise these things and with which we define the terms that refer to them. And the same approach is taken to the various stages through which anything passes. As with relations, change is viewed as external to the thing itself, something that happened (or will happen) to it, so that its new form is treated as independent of what it was earlier (as we saw in the myth and riddle recounted above), rather than as an essential aspect or stage of what it is. With this way of organising reality, both perception and conception tend to concentrate on small, relatively isolated and static things, with their many relations and changes only receiving serious attention when they ‘bump’ into us (or we into them). But changes and relations are the basic building materials of the ‘bigger picture’ in every sphere of reality, and reducing them to the role of bit players in a drama whose overall plot is of little concern results in the kind of partial, static and one-sided thinking characteristic of most of bourgeois ideology.

In contrast, the philosophy of internal relations holds that what others take to be a ‘thing’ that may or may not undergo change and may or may not have relations with other things is itself both a ‘process’ and a ‘relation’ (though some of these may take time and special efforts or instruments to uncover). What was a thing for the philosophy of external relations becomes a relation evolving over time (or a process in constant interaction with other processes). The qualities that followers of the philosophy of external relations ascribe to a thing are not denied but transformed into aspects or moments that can serve as vantage points from which to view and study their relations (including indirect relations) and changes, understood as essential aspects of what they are.


My thoughts are unclear but I believe I experience an ambiguity in understanding the strength this view takes. I'm wondering if it is as strong as considering that everything has essential properties that to change some other things is to change the thing. Somethings seem more clearly applicable to this sort of reasoning, like class in Marxist thought of the proletariat and bourgeoisie being liquidated once their relation to the means of production is changed by socialist revolution and developed into communism. Where there is no capitalist class taking the surplus profit out of the labour of the proletariat.
So these two classes, proletariat and bourgeoisie, are defined by their relation to the means of production as well as to one another. Once done away with, it becomes incomprehensible to speak of such classes as they would no longer exist. This seems significant to what little of dialectics I've hopefully grasped, where in the simplified understand of dialectics there's speak of contradictory/opposites that subsume one another into something else. That to understand one thing one must also understand its opposing force for a totality.
This seems particularly interesting in that it seems that in my superficial readings of things on Marxist philosophy, totality is seen as necessary to getting close to truth or a improved understanding of reality.
That our mind struggles to conceptualize the totality of reality, its simply impossible to imagine such a thing and so we have to arbitrarily isolate things in the abstract to help bring clarity, which seems the tendency of analytical thought to break things down. Though, hopefully I am not harshly misrepresenting it out of ignorance, but would seem that many analytical thinkers treat their arbitrarily isolation of things as constituting reality rather than seeing it as the limits of human thought.
That situating things in 'context' is to properly affirm relevant information about things as they lose fundamental properties when they are abstracted from things too much. Not that this process isn't useful for clarity but that we should be aware of our arbitrary isolating of things.
This I feel might help touch on this line of thought and seems to fit in line with process philosophy.
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/a_ch03.php
Mindful of the dangers of using what one thinker says to support an interpretation of another, I shall limit my comments to features which Marx could not have missed in praising Dietzgen's work. Like Hegel, Dietzgen affirms that the existence of any thing is manifested through qualities which are its relations to other things. Hence, "Any thing that is torn out of its contextual relations ceases to exist" (Dietzgen, 1928, 96). So, too, Dietzgen declares—in almost the same words as Hegel-"The universal is the truth," meaning that the full truth about any one thing includes (because of its internal relations) the truth about everything (Dietzgen, 1928, 110).16 But unlike Hegel—and Marx too—who proceeds from these foundations to an investigation of the whole in each part, Dietzgen's inquiry is directed toward how such parts get established in the first place. For Hegel's and Marx's approach suggests that the preliminary problem of deciding which units of the whole to treat as parts has already been solved. Yet, it may legitimately be asked whether the unity posited by this conception does not preclude the very existence of those separate structures in which they claim to have caught sight of this unity. This is essentially the problem of individuation, or "abstraction", and it constitutes a major stumbling block for any philosophy of internal relations.

Dietzgen's contribution to the solution of this problem is his account of what can occur in individuation and what does occur. He asks, "Where do we find any practical unit outside of our abstract conceptions? Two halves, four fourths, eight eighths, or an infinite number of separate parts form the material out of which the mind fashions the mathematical unit. This book, its leaves, its letters, or their parts—are they units? Where do I begin and where do I stop?" (Dietzgen, 1928, 103). His answer is that the real world is composed of an infinite number of sense perceptible qualities whose interdependence makes them a single whole. If we began by applying the relational conception to social factors and then to things, we see now that it can also apply to qualities. Because the process of linking up qualities may be stopped at any point between the individual quality and the whole, the ways of dividing up the latter into distinct parts called "things" is endless. One result is that what appears as a thing here may be taken as an attribute of some other thing there. Every quality can be conceived of as a thing, and every thing as a quality; it all depends where the line is drawn. So much for what is possible.17

What actually occurs, that is the construction of units of a particular size and kind out of the "formless multiplicity" presented to our senses, is the work of the human mind. In Dietzgen's words, "the absolutely relative and transient forms of the sensual world serve as raw material for our brain activity, in order through abstraction of the general or like characteristics, to become systematized, classified or ordered for our consciousness" (Dietzgen, 1928, 103). The forms in which the world appears to our senses are "relative" and "transient", but they are also said to possess the "like characteristics" which allow us to generalize from them. "The world of the mind", we learn, finds "its material, its premise, its proof, its beginning, and its boundary, in sensual reality" (Dietzgen, 1928, 119). In this reality, like qualities give rise to a single conception because they are, in fact, alike. This is responsible, too, for the wide agreement in the use of concepts, particularly of those which refer to physical objects. Yet, it is only when we supply these similar qualities with a concept that they become a distinct entity, and can be considered separately from the vast interconnection in which they reside.

According to Dietzgen, therefore, the whole is revealed in certain standard parts (in which some thinkers have sought to reestablish the relations of the whole), because these are the parts in which human beings through conceptualization have actually fragmented the whole. The theoretical problem of individuation is successfully resolved by people in their daily practice. The fact that they do not see what they are doing as individuating parts from an interconnected whole is, of course, another question, and one with which Dietzgen does not concern himself. He is content to make the point that, operating with real sense material, it is the conceptualizing activity of people that gives the world the particular "things" which these same people see in it. Even mind, we learn, results from abstracting certain common qualities out of real experiences of thinking; they become something apart when we consider them as "Mind" (Dietzgen, 1928, 120).18

Dietzgen's practical answer to the problem of individuation suggests how structures can exist within a philosophy of internal relations, something which Althusser for one has declared impossible.19 Yet, if individuation is not an arbitrary act but one governed by broad similarities existing in nature itself, there is a necessary, if vague, correlation between such natural similarities and the structures conveyed by our concepts. This is how the study of any conceptual scheme, whether based on a philosophy of internal relations or not, teaches us something about the real world (unfortunately, this cannot be pressed—as many insist on doing—beyond what is common to all conceptual schemes). That Marx, through his study of capitalism, came to stress certain social relations as more important does not in any way conflict with his conception of each part as relationally containing its ties of dependence to everything else. The fact that some ties are preferred and may, for certain purposes, be viewed as forming a structure is no more surprising than any other act of individuation (conceptualization) based on real similarities.



After all this, I don't know how to make sense in cases less obvious than the class relation, where its not readily apparent what essential property is entailed and how it may be changed because of changes elsewhere. In my own thoughts not knowing how or if they relate, I wonder if there is a temporal relation, as it seems process philosophy and Marxism aren't static in the way analytical notions are.

To help articulate this point...
An illustration of the temporal nature of things and how it can be fruitful to think of things in flux and not stuck in a present moment.
http://sci-hub.cc/10.1177/0309816814564128
One of the more profound tales in Greek mythology has the Sphinx ask Oedipus, ‘What walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs in the afternoon, and on three legs in the evening?’ With his life at stake, Oedipus comes up with the right answer: ‘Man, who crawls on all fours when he is an infant, walks on two legs as an adult, and uses a cane to walk in his old age’. What makes this piece of wisdom as intriguing to us as it was to the people of that time is that the answer is as obvious as the question to which it replies is murky. Of course, man walks; but as we all know – and as the question itself seems to suggest – human beings differ from other animals in using only two legs when walking. With this assumption, our attention is directed to the rest of the animal world. But this assumption rests on another, which is that people are essentially what they appear to be at this moment. How they got that way and what they become as they get older – the stages each of us goes through over a lifetime – are omitted in determining who and what we are (and, in this myth, how many legs we use for walking)

What happened between the Sphinx’s question and the answer it received is that the real differences between the way an individual gets around in infancy, adulthood and old age were treated by Oedipus as internally related aspects of who and what we are and do as human beings. That his answer ‘Man’ is accepted, not only by the Sphinx but by most of us, suggests that extending the notion of ‘Man’ to include the different stages of his life strikes most people as common sense, and that it is relatively easy to switch from viewing the relations between adjoining periods as external to what each one really (and narrowly) is, to viewing them as internally related aspects of the same whole. But the confusion, if only temporary, that most people feel on first hearing the question also suggests that, while reframing the problem in this way is not particularly difficult, recognising when to do so is another matter

And something to help illustrate the static nature of abstract thought that I have the impression is considered prevalent in analytical thought.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/pilling/works/capital/pilling2.htm
Concepts, according to Kantianism, do not grow up and develop out of the sensed world but are already given before it, in the a priori categories of reasoning. These categories are supposed to grasp the multifarious material given in sensation, but themselves remain fixed and dead. ‘Sensation’ and ‘reason’ were counterposed to each other in thoroughly mechanical manner, with no connection between them. And the same was true of the content of knowledge and its forms. On this last point Rubin is surely absolutely correct when he states:

One cannot forget that on the question of the relation between content and form, Marx took the standpoint of Hegel and not of Kant. Kant treated form as something external in relation to the content, and as something which adheres to the content from the outside. From the standpoint of Hegel’s philosophy, the content is not in itself something to which form adheres from the outside. Rather, through its development, the content itself gives birth to the form which is already latent in the content. Form necessarily grows from the content itself. (Rubin, 1972, p. 117)

We shall return to this question of economic form specifically in connection with the value-form. But let us note here that it was Hegel, on the basis of his criticism of Kantianism, who attempted to resolve the problem (of the connection between the ‘sensed’ and the ‘logical’, the ‘content’ and the ‘form’) by showing that thought is a dialectical process of movement, from thought of a lower grade to that of a higher grade. According to Hegel, concepts developed by thought ceased to be dead, a priori products of the individual mind, but forms endowed with life, the life of the movement of thought itself. This is Lenin’s point when he says, ‘ What Hegel demands is a logic the forms of which would be forms with content, inseparably connected with that content’ and Lenin notes Hegel’s attack on logic considered entirely from the subjective standpoint:

Logic is the science not of external forms of thought, but of the laws of development ‘of all material, natural and spiritual things’, i.e. of the development of the entire concrete content of the world and of its cognition i.e. the sum-total, the conclusion of the history of knowledge of the world.


But in this point of things being temporal, I'm not sure whether the idea is a broad as if things had been somewhat different elsewhere in the world, I would not be the same person I am even if in many other ways I was still alike. That it wouldn't be an A=A likeness, but I'm wondering if this is too broad and instead it is limited to things that are more clearly viewable as fundamentally changed by changes in the relations in the world. Much like the Marx quote, that the black fella still be himself, but he can only be a slave in certain relations and so internal relations isn't a universalizing "we're all connected" idea but that what we intrinsically are is defined by relations relations of others thing in what they are defined and seen as.

This is largely a stream of thought that I implore for greater thought on how to better understand this philosophy. I don't know the limits and am speculating to its relation to things like essential and accidental properties as somehow being what I should understand to help make sense but unsure if that is as relevant as I imagine it.
#14744304
Reread some of sources and think this might help me clarify internal relations somewhat and suggests I should be a more diligent studyer of texts before making messy OPs.
Well, if any of this should spark interest in someones thought, I'd be interested to read and consider their perspective.

p. 19 http://sci-hub.cc/10.1177/0309816814564128
A major problem in understanding ‘abstraction’ is that Marx uses this concept in four different, albeit closely related, ways. First and most important is his use of it to refer to the mental activity of focusing on some part of the world, either because something has happened – like a noise – that attracted our attention to it; or – if we consciously choose to abstract - for the purpose of thinking or acting upon it. Second, it is also used to refer to that part of reality that has been separated out in this way. If ‘abstraction’ functions as a verb in the first instance, it functions as a noun here. The third sense of ‘abstraction’ is a sub-set of the second, where the part separated out includes too little to allow for an adequate comprehension of its subject matter, given what it is that the person making the abstraction hopes to understand with it. A notion of ‘freedom’ that is restricted to the absence of restraint, or freedom from, and doesn’t include any of the conditions that would enable people to do what they want, or freedom to, is an example of this. Most of the distortions found in bourgeois ideology come from such limited abstractions. The fourth sense of ‘abstraction’, which Marx calls ‘real abstraction’, differs from the first three in coming from the frequent repetition of an important social activity, like buying and selling, that instills a particular pattern in our thinking about just that activity. Rather than replacing the other uses of ‘abstraction’, this one simply underlines the important role that the real world, and especially our repeated experiences in it, play in fixing on both the ideological and non-ideological abstractions in which we think about it as well as the mental process of abstraction by which we shape them

Singling out the process of abstraction, as I have, also allows us to see that the boundaries Marx draws around his ‘object’ of study are of three different kinds, which take place on three different plains of reality. These are abstraction of extension, abstraction of level of generality, and abstraction of vantage point (my terms for them). Abstraction of extension has to do with how much of the internal relations between anything in space and/or across time Marx wants to include in the same focus (so that they appear as aspects of the same ‘thing’) on any occasion. Most of the examples in my account of the process of
abstraction up till now have come from its mode of extension.

Having established the ‘size’ of anything through his abstraction of extension, the abstraction of level of generality enabled Marx to limit his focus within this extension to those of its qualities that share a particular degree of generality, on a scale ranging from the unique (where there is only one instance of it – I’ve labeled this ‘level one’) to the most general (which, for Marx, usually meant the human condition, and all we have in common as part of that – I’ve labeled this ‘level five’). Marx’s journalistic writings on Lord Palmerston or Napoleon III are examples of the former (level one), while Marx’s discussions of human needs and powers (found not only in the 1844 Manuscripts but also in many of his later writings as well) are examples of the latter (level five).

But given Marx’s well known interests, the main levels of generality brought into focus in his work are class society (what is common to all class societies throughout history, including capitalism– my ‘level four’); capitalism in general (what sets capitalism apart from other class societies or my ‘level three’); and the current stage of modern capitalism, the last 20-50 years in a particular capitalist country (possessing some conditions that differ both quantitatively and qualitatively from the more general characteristics that apply to capitalism in general – my ‘level two’). The differences in the degree of generality are treated as belonging to different ‘levels’, because these are the five places along the continuum stretching from the unique to the most general where the interaction between the qualities found there create a distinctive movement in which everything on it is caught up. It is such a ‘law of motion’ at the level of capitalism in general (level three) that Marx says he wants to ‘lay bare’ in his major work, Capital, and he give this as his aim at the very beginning of the work, indicating just how important it is in his overall understanding of capitalism (Marx 1958: 10).

...

Finally, the third mode of abstraction that Marx uses to set up his subject of study is abstraction of vantage point. Every inquiry – but also every account of its findings - begins from somewhere, and where that is establishes a perspective in which everything that follows finds its place, order, size, limits, neighbours and, to a large degree, its significance (or lack of). If abstraction of extension takes place on a plain of quantifiable entities, of more and less of anything existing in space and time, and abstraction of level of generality takes place on a plain marked by different degrees of generality ranging from the unique to the most general, abstraction of vantage point takes place among a large number of competing perspectives. Individuals and groups of people have viewpoints based largely on their social class position and the problems that come with it, and this is usually what leads them to abstract certain vantage points for examining or presenting anything. But it is the latter and not the former that establishes the perspective, and all perspectives offer a one-sided view of their subject matter. Knowing this, Marx frequently changes the vantage point from which he examines as well as presents the patterns, and especially the movements in them and between them, and between them and the version of the whole – usually capitalism in general – that is his prime object of study.3
#14746364
Hi wellsey,

I've studied this tradition of philosophy somewhat extensively, and I think I can help you with some things.

First of all, it's important to say that what you are doing is 'academic philosophy', which is largely meaningless drivel and a grandiose waste of your time. You could boil much of that down to, 'identity is relative'. To try to make a science out of this is not a good idea, unless there is a very good and specific reason for you to do so.

So, distil your question. Then ask why it is important. ask yourself where you are headed with this analysis.

Because apparently, you're going nowhere with it.

Academic philosophy is a massive lie right now, wellsy. In large part, it is sophistry calculated in unnecessary complexity. Complexity, wellsy, addles and confuses Truth -- it does not reveal it.

But this is intentional. as long as you are bogging yourself down in this sort of ..nonsense.. you will never really move on to the really, truly important questions you need to uncover.

for example.

Why did Marx omit mention of international bankers in his tome, 'Kapital'? -does this omission imply collusion, (as was asserted by hitler and Bakunin, both?)

who funded the Bolshevik revolution of 17, and made it's success possible?

are Marxist ideals all mutually contingent on each other? i.e., is an economic communism necessarily atheist? is an individual fundamentally 'capitalist' or 'proletariat', or is he something more? ..could Marx be adopting his version of Internationalism in collusion with international bankers..? is the State really human artifice, or is it it's own organism..?

..I mean, you can go on to ask so many better questions than you're asking and spending your time with. THIS is genuine philosophy, uncovering these better questions. and, notice, they often lead to MUCH more interesting investigations. The role of academic philosophy, as I think you are doing, is to SUPPRESS genuine development.

again, look at your questions .. and look at mine. Do you see the difference?

Don't let those fancy good-for-nothing faggots in the university department pretend to you intellectualism! they are liars and frauds, my friend! branch out on your own! read! investigate! follow your heart!
#14746419
Marx omit[s] mention of international bankers in his tome

Not strictly true.

"fictitious capital"

Marx wrote:With the development of interest-bearing capital and the credit system, all capital seems to double itself, and sometimes treble itself, by the various modes in which the same capital, or perhaps even the same claim on a debt, appears in different forms in different hands. The greater portion of this "money-capital" is purely fictitious.

See Engels, Footnote 3 in Marx, Capital Vol. III Part V, Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise, Interest-Bearing Capital, Chapter 29. Component Parts of Bank Capital.


:)
#14746551
wow, thank you so much!!! I have to admit .. I only read volume 1 ! I will have to investigate that chapter immediately. ..of course I am still suspecting that it is more of an omission than an expose..

see? THAT is practicing philosophy...
#14746557
@Wellsy: Have you read Nausea, by Sartre? When you mention Hegelian philosophy and its differences from Kantian philosophy, I'm inclined to think Nausea would add to an understanding of these differences.

In essence, Nausea tells the story of someone for whom the Kantian "categories of the understanding" stop working. Language breaks down, leaving only these internal relations, which amount to a vast, unfathomable interconnectedness. Demarcations among objects disappear, and the protagonist is left with a direct sensory account of the thing-in-itself, which overwhelms him.

A while back, I was reading Freud, who said pain is what prompts us to distinguish one thing from another. When we lack a way of telling apart sharp edges and hot stoves, we are bound to die to sharp edges and hot stoves; language, then, is an outgrowth of hedonism.

Jung and others describe "ego death," which is an achievable state of self, or rather a lack thereof. I think it comes from realizing that language exists only at a certain level of abstraction from raw perception. Dale from The Walking Dead puts it best: "Words are meager things; sometimes they can fall short."

Ego death, of course, can't be our primary mode of subsistence, seeing as we live in an ego-driven world—now more than ever. But it does lend some perspective.

As for how all this relates to Marxism—I didn't think I'd get this far. :D Marx, so far as I know, wanted to turn Hegel's idealist dialectics inside-out, so that they'd afford a material, rather than ideal, account of history. Humankind and its development, therefore, are predicated on material conditions, like the forces and relations of production. Ideas, culture, and the like form society's "superstructure," which often helps to cement the current relations of production.

That analysis, though, relies on abstraction. And as you said, abstraction presents a problem for any philosophy of internal relations, in the form of the question: which abstractions mark legitimate attempts at understanding, and which don't? Abstractions, while sometimes fit to explain history, can always lapse into vulgarization.

There is, as such, a fine line between genuine philosophy and excuse-making. Marxism, I believe, straddles this line.
#14751765
david.findley wrote:Hi wellsey,

I've studied this tradition of philosophy somewhat extensively, and I think I can help you with some things.

First of all, it's important to say that what you are doing is 'academic philosophy', which is largely meaningless drivel and a grandiose waste of your time. You could boil much of that down to, 'identity is relative'. To try to make a science out of this is not a good idea, unless there is a very good and specific reason for you to do so.

[snip]

again, look at your questions .. and look at mine. Do you see the difference?

Don't let those fancy good-for-nothing faggots in the university department pretend to you intellectualism! they are liars and frauds, my friend! branch out on your own! read! investigate! follow your heart!

I think it might be a mistake to take my confusion and lack of articulation is a sound basis on which to criticize those I've referenced on the subject.
I can think of criticism to the irrelevance some philosophy can have to the lives of everyday individuals and as Rick Roderick would describe it, amounts to an entire field of a few individuals talking among themselves.
At this point it seems to me to be an issue with individualization and how arbitrary it is, where we cut off things and set boundaries between our conceptual understanding of things. To not mistake our abstractions as being 1 to 1 representation of empirical reality.

ANd part of branching on my own has been to find these works, I'm not about to try and invent the wheel so to speak and rather try and draw a foundation of information and knowledge from those that have thought long before me. Before can get anywhere to 'original' thought, have to build up ones understanding. My confusion is in part because I'm not very good at not making spontaneous connections between ideas and things and so am prone to tangents. I was quick to make this thread upon having only just been exposed to these ideas without having let myself digest them as it helps to speak aloud or write to help myself clarify things. The sort of confusion some speak in reading hegel as feeling like someone in the process of thinking rather than one of clear conclusive thought. Though the sophistry in Hegels writing can be explained by more than that.
I hope you've done well to answer your own curisoity in regards to your question about international bankers in Das Kapital.


recurnal wrote:@Wellsy: Have you read Nausea, by Sartre? When you mention Hegelian philosophy and its differences from Kantian philosophy, I'm inclined to think Nausea would add to an understanding of these differences.

In essence, Nausea tells the story of someone for whom the Kantian "categories of the understanding" stop working. Language breaks down, leaving only these internal relations, which amount to a vast, unfathomable interconnectedness. Demarcations among objects disappear, and the protagonist is left with a direct sensory account of the thing-in-itself, which overwhelms him.

A while back, I was reading Freud, who said pain is what prompts us to distinguish one thing from another. When we lack a way of telling apart sharp edges and hot stoves, we are bound to die to sharp edges and hot stoves; language, then, is an outgrowth of hedonism.

Jung and others describe "ego death," which is an achievable state of self, or rather a lack thereof. I think it comes from realizing that language exists only at a certain level of abstraction from raw perception. Dale from The Walking Dead puts it best: "Words are meager things; sometimes they can fall short."

Ego death, of course, can't be our primary mode of subsistence, seeing as we live in an ego-driven world—now more than ever. But it does lend some perspective.

As for how all this relates to Marxism—I didn't think I'd get this far. :D Marx, so far as I know, wanted to turn Hegel's idealist dialectics inside-out, so that they'd afford a material, rather than ideal, account of history. Humankind and its development, therefore, are predicated on material conditions, like the forces and relations of production. Ideas, culture, and the like form society's "superstructure," which often helps to cement the current relations of production.

That analysis, though, relies on abstraction. And as you said, abstraction presents a problem for any philosophy of internal relations, in the form of the question: which abstractions mark legitimate attempts at understanding, and which don't? Abstractions, while sometimes fit to explain history, can always lapse into vulgarization.

There is, as such, a fine line between genuine philosophy and excuse-making. Marxism, I believe, straddles this line.

I haven't read Sartre and only heard superficial accounts about him and his thoughts.
But what you explain makes a lot of sense to the kind of thinking I was trying to do, in that I have a distinction in my mind based on those readings between our abstractions and the raw empirical world we experience. That individuation is useful and its necessary to block out things and make arbtirary distinctions for the sake of clarity and focus but that it seems to be a mistake in thinking its an inherently accurate representation of reality. It makes me think to the quote
The map is not the territory

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation#.22The_map_is_not_the_territory.22
Which is summarized in a fallacy of reification - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

And I suppose your point about the question of what makes the legitimate boundaries of abstractions is kind of whats on my mind now.
I think in the overquoting I've done, this section might help ground how it might be dealt with
Dietzgen's practical answer to the problem of individuation suggests how structures can exist within a philosophy of internal relations, something which Althusser for one has declared impossible.19 Yet, if individuation is not an arbitrary act but one governed by broad similarities existing in nature itself, there is a necessary, if vague, correlation between such natural similarities and the structures conveyed by our concepts. This is how the study of any conceptual scheme, whether based on a philosophy of internal relations or not, teaches us something about the real world (unfortunately, this cannot be pressed—as many insist on doing—beyond what is common to all conceptual schemes). That Marx, through his study of capitalism, came to stress certain social relations as more important does not in any way conflict with his conception of each part as relationally containing its ties of dependence to everything else. The fact that some ties are preferred and may, for certain purposes, be viewed as forming a structure is no more surprising than any other act of individuation (conceptualization) based on real similarities.

I suppose the point is to try and make ones concepts relate as best they can to the empirical world or be the sort of heavily abstract concepts that simply do well to explain that empirical world without necessarily having clear material signifiers, the theory to the empirical data. Broad theorizing that seeks vantage points that have great explanatory power for the complex world we live in.
I suppose analytical thought already does this in its own way, but I think in being rather static and ignoring the intuitive sense of the temporal nature of things, in a state of flux, they aren't always the best in conceptualizing things. I suppose beyond just a point of stating the obvious of how our abstractions aren't the empirical world itself, its useful to try and think in ways where there is movement in our abstractions, which I assume comes from the emphasis on the relations between things rather than things being isolated to themselves which I have the impression of a fragmented and static sense in analytical philosophy.
#14762060
I'm not sure, but I think something clicked for me as I got into some other discussions after dwelling on the word abstraction and issue of reification.
And my impression is that it's impossible to have a objective view point (God's eye) being subjects that we are.
And when we abstract the world, we inevitably focus in on somethings which means we neglect certain things from our abstract frame. That there's a limit to what's held in our mind, that its inevtiable that we abstract and limit things from our focus.

But an issue with what I imagine is called bourgeoisie view of the world and reality is that is is apt to view reality from one perspective or at least consider one abstract perspective as the most approximate reality.
So whilst I've seen a libertarian argue that they adhere to methodological individualism, I would claim that despite it only being methodological rather than some metaphysical position. That they make the individual ontology the most fundamental and approximate abstract perspective of reality. That they recognize collectives, but tend to ignore them from their analysis or consider such analysis as less fruitful. To which the same limitations would apply if one were to apply same methodology to collectives, the solution is to consider both perspectives as dynamic and in relation to one another. Which is what Marx does, considered different abstracted positions. That emphasizing one abstracted perspectives doesn't necessarily commit one to believe that it is the most approximate view of reality, as it's a necessity to have abstractions that don't consider all of reality.
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/a_ch03.php
Dietzgen's practical answer to the problem of individuation suggests how structures can exist within a philosophy of internal relations, something which Althusser for one has declared impossible.19 Yet, if individuation is not an arbitrary act but one governed by broad similarities existing in nature itself, there is a necessary, if vague, correlation between such natural similarities and the structures conveyed by our concepts. This is how the study of any conceptual scheme, whether based on a philosophy of internal relations or not, teaches us something about the real world (unfortunately, this cannot be pressed—as many insist on doing—beyond what is common to all conceptual schemes). That Marx, through his study of capitalism, came to stress certain social relations as more important does not in any way conflict with his conception of each part as relationally containing its ties of dependence to everything else. The fact that some ties are preferred and may, for certain purposes, be viewed as forming a structure is no more surprising than any other act of individuation (conceptualization) based on real similarities.


When one isn't sensitive to emphasizing the dynamic (flux) nature of things and their relations to one another by considering multiple perspectives of abstraction, one has one sided views of reality. Which leads to conclusions like mechanistic materialism and interpretation of things as deterministic.
And in a sense Marxism offers a view of the world in which things are viewed as chaotic, irrational and non-linear but considered holistically, have limits to how they will function and can ultimately be considered deterministic, its a dialectical determinism. That Marx's emphasis on things like the economy and material conditions from my understanding was to examine the limits to the potential for the chaos that is human civilization's development. That to me it's like considering what are sufficient/necessary conditions for something to have a causal effect. Which is why by considering the material and economic conditions, that it sets a sort of frame for the potential or likely effects on things like cultural expression/the superstructure.

And how does this relate to internal relations?
Well it seems to be a point about how far we abstract and in what way. It would seem that dialectics emphasizes the dynamic and relational nature of things in reality.
That when we consider that things are in a state of flux, we are drawn to the temporal nature of things, so we don't view them as static things. So when we are abstracting things to consider how things caused another, we aren't focused simply on the immediate. We ground our view in a historical sense, where we can abstract about how many variables changed over time and may have interacted.
When we recognize the many relevant variables rather than trying to treat causality in a complex reality with many things acting simultaneously, we can't get as accurate as a prediction as we would in the exact science from classical physics.
For more than 200 years, after many experiments on every accessible topic of macroscopic nature, Newton’s laws came to be regarded by physicists and by much of society as the laws that were obeyed by all phenomena in the physical world. They were successful in explaining all motions, from those of the planets and stars to those of the molecules in a gas. This universal success led to the widespread belief in the principle of determinism, which says that, if the state of a system of objects (even as all-encompassing as the universe) is known precisely at any given time, such as now, the state of the system at any time in the future can in principle be predicted precisely. For complex systems, the actual mathematics might be too complicated, but that did not affect the principle. Ultimately, this principle was thought to apply to living beings as well as to inanimate objects. Such a deterministic world was thought to be completely mechanical, without room for free will, indeed without room for even a small deviation from its ultimate destiny. If there was a God in this world, his role was limited entirely to setting the whole thing into motion at the beginning.

Intrinsic to the principle of determinism was the assumption that the state of a system of objects could be precisely described at all times. This meant, for example, that the position and velocity of each object could be specified exactly, without any uncertainty. Without such exactitude, prediction of future positions and velocities would be impossible. After many, many experiments it seemed clear that only the inevitable imprecision in measuring instruments limited the accuracy of a velocity or position measurement, and nobody doubted that accuracies could improve without limit as measurement techniques improved.

But because we can't have exact knowledge of all things, as that would require a rather objective view of everything simultaneously, but social science is an inexact science.

That it would seem internal relations is merely the appreciation that an object like a book need not be considered as it is at the present time, which makes it easy to see it only in terms of a static object. But to see how the book relates to its own origins, the social processes that go into creating the book in both its content and very material basis. And this sort of approach of not simply viewing the book as simply a book on a table but able to consider its history and even its probable future is applied to more complex phenomenon. The larger the scale and the more complex it is, the more difficult for an accurate prediction.

And this seems to be where Marxist theorists have to build on work of Marx, true to his dialectical view. Which might at times even mean that by following his principles one overturns certain assumptions or conclusions. Like how Lenin contributed to Marxist theory with his work on imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism brings into doubt any optimistic view of capitalism's expansion of the means of the production may not apply in the same degree as it has for already developed and industrialized countries. Which exploited the wealth in resources and labor from poorer/weaker nations and still do so. That there is no comparable scenario readily available to a lot of third world countries, they don't have different countries to play out the same imperialist tendencies as they're under the thumb of it.

I hope I've grasped something true of Marxism and internal relations. I feel like I have a different view of things now which I assume is from attempts to understand it but still need to refine it and clarify the concepts to myself. If anyone has any perspective to criticize a misunderstanding of mine, I'd appreciate such criticism to consider it. Are my thoughts comprehensible or does it seem to be difficult to discern it from a postmodernist generator XD
#14765328
Been trying to find more about Marx's manner of thought in regards to abstractions and think it helps clarify the manner in which Marx sees the world, of particular importance seems to be the work of Evald Illyenkov.
That we all recognize that we abstract, but what isn't given enough attention is the nature of abstractions.
So for example, the limitation of some empiricists is that they recognize that we conceive of the sensory reality in the mind but consider it a relatively direct grasping of a concrete reality and that which doesn't exist as an actual object is purely abstract and thus is subjective.
But it is a mistake to think of thought as so distinctly separate from the empirical reality and this treatment of abstractions being purely subjective as some things aren't empirical objects may be the basis for not properly understanding the world and leading to fragmented examinations of reality.
Because to understand the essence of things we need to consider them in their real world relations rather than think of them purely independent as if in a vacuum.
http://69.195.124.91/~brucieba/2014/04/13/ilyenkovs-dialectic-of-the-abstract-and-the-concrete-i/
For Hegel the essence or content of objects of investigation cannot be known by examining them in isolation. The thing cannot be known in itself as its essence exists outside of itself and in relation to, or in its connectedness with, other objects or phenomena. As Ilyenkov explains:

“That is why a concept, according to Hegel, does not exist as a separate word, term, or symbol. It exists only in the process of unfolding in a proposition, in a syllogism expressing connectedness of separate definitions, and ultimately only in a system of propositions and syllogisms, only in an integral, well-developed theory. If a concept is pulled out of this connection, what remains of it is mere verbal integument, a linguistic symbol. The content of the concept, its meaning, remains outside it-in series of other definitions, for a word taken separately is only capable of designating an object, naming it, it is only capable of serving as a sign, symbol, marker, or symptom.”

And this neglect to the relations that inform the essence of things is what Marx treats as ideology, because it is a view of the world that doesn't correspond to a approximate understanding of the reality but is one sided.
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/dd_ch05a_content.php
Taken in this third sense, abstractions are the basic unit of ideology, the inescapable ideational result of living and working in alienated society. "Freedom," for example, is said to be such an abstraction whenever we remove the real individual from "the conditions of existence within which these individuals enter into contact" (Marx, 1973, 164). Omitting the conditions that make freedom possible (or impossible)—including the real alternatives available, the role of money, the socialization of the person choosing, etc.—from the meaning of "freedom" leaves a notion that can only distort and obfuscate even that part of reality it sets out to convey. A lot of Marx's criticism of ideology makes use of this sense of "abstraction".

And I take it that because thinkers like Hegel and Marx treat relations as important to figuring out the essence of what ever thing they're trying to investigate, the philosophy of internal relations makes sense because things are changed in their nature when things significantly related to them change, because it effects the essence of the thing. Which is different to external relations that treats things as independent of one another...
https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/dd_ch05a_content.php
The view held by most people, scholars and others, in what we've been calling the common sense view, maintains that there are things and there are relations, and that neither can be subsumed in the other. This position is summed up in Bishop Butler's statement, which G. E. Moore adopts as a motto: "Everything is what it is, and not another thing," taken in conjunction with Hume's claim, "All events seem entirely loose and separate" (Moore, 1903, title page; Hume, 1955, 85). On this view, capital may be found to have relations with labor, value, etc., and it may even be that accounting for such relations plays an important role in explaining what capital is; but capital is one thing, and its relations quite another. Marx, on the other hand, following Hegel's lead in this matter, rejects what is, in essence, a logical dichotomy. For him, as we saw, capital is itself a Relation, in which the ties of the material means of production to labor, value, commodity, etc., are interiorized as parts of what capital is. Marx refers to "things themselves" as "their interconnections" (Marx and Engels, 1950, 488). Moreover, these relations extend backward and forward in time, so that capital's conditions of existence as they have evolved over the years and its potential for future development are also viewed as parts of what it is.

On the common sense view, any element related to capital can change without capital itself changing. Workers, for example, instead of selling their labor-power to capitalists, as occurs in capitalism, could become slaves, or serfs, or owners of their own means of production, and in every case their instruments of work would still be capital. The tie between workers and the means of production here is contingent, a matter of chance, and therefore external to what each really is. In Marx's view, a change of this sort would mean a change in the character of capital itself, in its appearance and/or functioning no matter how far extended. The tie is a necessary and essential one; it is an internal relation. Hence, where its specific relationship to workers has changed, the means of production become something else, and something that is best captured by a concept other than "capital." Every element that comes into Marx's analysis of capitalism is a Relation of this sort. It is this view that underlies and helps explain his practice of abstraction and the particular abstractions that result, along with all the theories raised on them.

And to emphasize the manner of abstraction, Marx seems to emphasize abstracting in good and bad ways based on this summary. That good abstractions are able to draw out the essential aspects of a thing under examination whilst bad ones ignore it, and the essential elements are underpinned by the sort of relations of the thing.
https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/abstraction-abstract-labor-and-ilyenkov/
Spoiler: show
The goal of this abstraction is to eventually identify the essential connections between different abstract aspects, slowly piecing the pieces together to give us a concrete picture of the whole. However this can only happen if we abstract correctly. There are two senses in with Marx talks of abstractions, a good and a bad way of abstracting. When abstraction has gone bad Marx often refers to the abstraction as ‘one-sided’. This means that the abstraction views an aspect of reality in an incomplete, one-sided way. An essential aspect of the nature of the object has been left out. Often Marx critiques bourgeois economists for making one-sided abstractions that make it seem like capitalism is a universal, a-historical system by abstracting away all of the historically specific aspects of capital. For instance, if we say that capital is just tools used to make more tools we have performed a sloppy, 1-sided abstraction. We are viewing capital merely from the abstract general features that capital has of increasing physical quantities of things while abstracting away the historically specific value-relations that give capitalism its essential nature.

This shows that abstraction can be arbitrary. If we are free to select one general feature over another we can radically change the concept of capital. If we choose only the ahistorical features we can make capital seem eternal. If abstraction is just seen as the identification of general features then we have no choice but to be arbitrary in our abstractions. But if abstraction is seen differently, as identifying the essential nature of an object, as identifying the “relation within which this thing is this thing” as Ilenkov puts it, then we can be scientific about our abstractions.

When we make an abstraction we want to select that aspect of the object which identifies its essence. Since the essence of things is in their relation to other things, we want to identify the essential relations which govern the object, abstracting away other non-essential aspects. Thus capital’s essence is in the increase of value in production through the exploitation of wage labor. A funny thing happens when we make abstractions of this kind: They often cease to be general features of the entire class. For instance, the above abstract definition of capital does not describe the general features of all capitalist activity. For instance, banks have an increase in value over time but they do not engage in production. Neither do landlords. So the abstraction, capital, is not a general property of capital. Instead it is an abstraction that gets to an essential relation. The profit of banks and landlords is a derivative profit, a subtraction from the surplus value created in production by other capitalists. This is a very different sense of abstraction that we are often used to. Here the abstraction ‘capital’ identifies the essential relation which makes all forms of capital possible, wether or not they share the same general features! The same is true with the basic abstract starting point of Marx’s theory: the commodity. As Ilenkov points out, Marx defines the commodity form very abstractly, even abstraction away money at first and just looking at the relation of one commodity to another. But this basic commodity-commodity relation is generative of the whole complex of social forms that exist in a capitalist economy. Even though some aspects of capitalism (credit default swaps for instance) are not the exchange of one product of labor for another this basic C-C relation is the logical and historical cell which is generative of the whole.

This way of abstracting gets us out of the arbitrary nature of old-logic where we chose whatever general features we wanted. Instead when we abstract we must identify the essential relation which defines an object, a relation that is generative of the class. This requires a very careful scientific approach to understanding how one form generates another, etc. This is the process of unfolding contradictions, etc…. but I will not get into that here.

A good abstraction, one that really identities the essential “relation within which the thing is the thing” is called a ‘concrete abstraction’. From the standpoint of old-logic this seems a contradiction in terms. But it makes perfect sense once we jettison the prejudice that abstract-concrete refers to thought-reality. Concrete abstractions don’t just refer to ideas. They refer to real things in the world. Every concept is abstract in the sense that it just refers to one aspect of reality. Every concept (every well-defined dialectical concept) is concrete in that it refers to the specific features that define an object in relation to the whole rather than to abstract general features. So every well-conceived dialectical concept is a concrete-abstraction.


And this seems to be where Marx is quite distinguished in that he emphasizes that certain abstractions are concrete in a way. And my impression so far is he treats the relations between things as being an objective reality that exists external to the mind and not something purely subjective. That it is the empiricist who fragments these relations and treats abstractions that don't refer to a empirical object are the ones that fool themselves by viewing things devoid of such relations.

http://69.195.124.91/~brucieba/2014/04/13/ilyenkovs-dialectic-of-the-abstract-and-the-concrete-i/
So when we abstractly theorise categories in Marxist economics for example such as exchange value, use value, intrinsic value, capital, capital accumulation and the rate of profit we are actually abstractly representing real existing material and social processes in our own minds.

Unlike neo-Kantian schools of logic, which counter pose abstraction or ‘pure forms of thought’ to given forms of objective reality whereas Marxism regards the abstract as no less concrete. For the neo-Kantians the concrete is only nominally present in thought, only in the capacity of the ‘designating name’. So in this schema there is either abstraction or there is concreteness and no interpenetration of the two. The abstract belongs to different spheres of the psych and not to the sensually given reality which is concrete and vice versa.

This difference may at first sight appear a minor one or a question of epistemology, the basis of understanding how knowledge is acquired, but is of fundamental significance as Ilyekov explains:

“Insofar as Marx treats the epistemological aspect of the problem, he interprets the abstract as any one-sided, incomplete, lopsided reflection of the object in consciousness, as opposed to concrete knowledge which is well developed, all-round, comprehensive knowledge. It does not matter at all in what subjective psychological form this knowledge is ‘experienced’ by the subject – in sensually perceived images or in abstract verbal form.”
#14765750
recurnal wrote:That analysis, though, relies on abstraction. And as you said, abstraction presents a problem for any philosophy of internal relations, in the form of the question: which abstractions mark legitimate attempts at understanding, and which don't? Abstractions, while sometimes fit to explain history, can always lapse into vulgarization.

There is, as such, a fine line between genuine philosophy and excuse-making. Marxism, I believe, straddles this line.

Though it doesn't go in great detail as one could surely dig further into what is thought to constitute essential elements and not. But I think this quote might be of use in emphasizing that looking for essential elements of a thing based on the meaning inferred on it from certain relations allows for a less arbitrary manner of abstraction. That I thought I'd emphasize this and repeat it though used same quote in prior post because I think it might be of interest to you on how might distinguish between good abstractions adn vulgar ones which might be considered ideology by Marx.


https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/abstraction-abstract-labor-and-ilyenkov/
The goal of this abstraction is to eventually identify the essential connections between different abstract aspects, slowly piecing the pieces together to give us a concrete picture of the whole. However this can only happen if we abstract correctly. There are two senses in with Marx talks of abstractions, a good and a bad way of abstracting. When abstraction has gone bad Marx often refers to the abstraction as ‘one-sided’. This means that the abstraction views an aspect of reality in an incomplete, one-sided way. An essential aspect of the nature of the object has been left out. Often Marx critiques bourgeois economists for making one-sided abstractions that make it seem like capitalism is a universal, a-historical system by abstracting away all of the historically specific aspects of capital. For instance, if we say that capital is just tools used to make more tools we have performed a sloppy, 1-sided abstraction. We are viewing capital merely from the abstract general features that capital has of increasing physical quantities of things while abstracting away the historically specific value-relations that give capitalism its essential nature.

This shows that abstraction can be arbitrary. If we are free to select one general feature over another we can radically change the concept of capital. If we choose only the ahistorical features we can make capital seem eternal. If abstraction is just seen as the identification of general features then we have no choice but to be arbitrary in our abstractions. But if abstraction is seen differently, as identifying the essential nature of an object, as identifying the “relation within which this thing is this thing” as Ilenkov puts it, then we can be scientific about our abstractions.

When we make an abstraction we want to select that aspect of the object which identifies its essence. Since the essence of things is in their relation to other things, we want to identify the essential relations which govern the object, abstracting away other non-essential aspects. Thus capital’s essence is in the increase of value in production through the exploitation of wage labor. A funny thing happens when we make abstractions of this kind: They often cease to be general features of the entire class. For instance, the above abstract definition of capital does not describe the general features of all capitalist activity. For instance, banks have an increase in value over time but they do not engage in production. Neither do landlords. So the abstraction, capital, is not a general property of capital. Instead it is an abstraction that gets to an essential relation. The profit of banks and landlords is a derivative profit, a subtraction from the surplus value created in production by other capitalists. This is a very different sense of abstraction that we are often used to. Here the abstraction ‘capital’ identifies the essential relation which makes all forms of capital possible, wether or not they share the same general features! The same is true with the basic abstract starting point of Marx’s theory: the commodity. As Ilenkov points out, Marx defines the commodity form very abstractly, even abstraction away money at first and just looking at the relation of one commodity to another. But this basic commodity-commodity relation is generative of the whole complex of social forms that exist in a capitalist economy. Even though some aspects of capitalism (credit default swaps for instance) are not the exchange of one product of labor for another this basic C-C relation is the logical and historical cell which is generative of the whole.

This way of abstracting gets us out of the arbitrary nature of old-logic where we chose whatever general features we wanted. Instead when we abstract we must identify the essential relation which defines an object, a relation that is generative of the class. This requires a very careful scientific approach to understanding how one form generates another, etc. This is the process of unfolding contradictions, etc…. but I will not get into that here.

A good abstraction, one that really identities the essential “relation within which the thing is the thing” is called a ‘concrete abstraction’. From the standpoint of old-logic this seems a contradiction in terms. But it makes perfect sense once we jettison the prejudice that abstract-concrete refers to thought-reality. Concrete abstractions don’t just refer to ideas. They refer to real things in the world. Every concept is abstract in the sense that it just refers to one aspect of reality. Every concept (every well-defined dialectical concept) is concrete in that it refers to the specific features that define an object in relation to the whole rather than to abstract general features. So every well-conceived dialectical concept is a concrete-abstraction.
#14766204
That analysis, though, relies on abstraction

Quite.

Linguistic relativity/ Sapir–Whorf hypothesis:
ˈ
The strong version

A hypothesis, first advanced by Edward Sapir in 1929 and subsequently developed by Benjamin Whorf, that the structure of a language determines a native speaker's perception and categorization of experience.


The weak version

The idea that the grammar and lexicon of a person’s language subtly affects their thoughts and perspectives on the world.

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